Psychometric Analysis on Determinants Affecting Cognitive Abilities of Learners: A Study on Ghanaian Students

Abstract

This study focuses on the effect of parental education, risk preference, soft skills, and household structure on the cognitive skills development of Ghanaian children. Cognitive skills fundamentally refer to as the abilities and processes involved in learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Various factors have been coined in explaining children’s cognitive skills but predictors such as parental education, risk preferences, soft skills, household structure, child’s previous cognitive skills, and teacher effectiveness, in both theoretical and empirical settings. The data used in this study was extracted from the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSPS). GSPS is a collaboration between the Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana, Economic Growth Center (EGC) at Yale University, and the Global Poverty Research Lab (GPRL) at Northwestern University. The overarching aim of the survey is to provide a comprehensive data set for understanding economic development over time in low-income countries within a period of 15-21 years with 5 surveys (waves). The first wave was collected in 2009-2010 using the manual method (paper and pencil) while waves 2 and 3 were collected in 2013-2014 and 2017-2018 respectively through computer-aided Personal Interviewing (CAPI). Cognitive skills development has received much attention from scholars and policymakers due to its contribution to human capital formation, economic growth and development, distribution of income, and individual earning. This study confirms the significance of assessing cognitive skills with digit span. Per the GSPS questionnaire, there were 15 hurdles of the digit span test.