Effort Project

Child experimental data and associated survey data: The dataset contains socioeconomic data and experimental measures of cognitive effort stemming from fifth-grade students and their parents. Among the socioeconomic variables that can be found in the dataset are the gender, age, and country of birth of both parents and students. Furthermore, the level of education, occupation, employment status and other socioeconomic variables of the parents are also present. A wide range of variables regarding the student in the school are included, such as grades, involvement, or homework. As effort is the main variable of interest, a series of non-cognitive (personality) variables that are conceptually close were measured, namely, Locus of Control, the Big Five and Need for Cognition. The students also completed a Raven matrices style IQ test (fluid intelligence). A few variables reflect the basic characteristics of their teacher and the school that the individuals attend.

Parent experimental data and associated survey data: The dataset contains socioeconomic data and experimental measures of cognitive effort stemming from parents of a subset of the fifth-grade students who participated in the laboratory experiments. Effort-related non-cognitive (personality) variables that were collected for children were also collected for the parents, including Locus of Control, the Big Five, and Need for Cognition. The parents also completed a Raven matrices style IQ test. Data is also collected on parental perceptions of child's non-cognitive (personality) traits, how parents reward children for good grades, and Covid-related information including how parents and children were navigating the situation at work and school. It should be noted that many questions on this second survey that participating parents completed were repeated from the first parental survey administered when children were completing the experiments. If the same question was asked on first and second parental surveys, missing responses on second survey were filled in with non-missing responses from first survey. Responses may vary for certain questions depending on whether it was a different parent who answered the first versus second survey. Therefore, it is required that it was the same parent was answering in order for these missing responses to be imputed this way. (2024-02-29)