IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jeduce/v45y2014i1p1-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Letter Grades on Student Effort, Course Selection, and Major Choice: A Regression-Discontinuity Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Joyce B. Main
  • Ben Ost

Abstract

The authors apply a regression-discontinuity design to identify the causal impact of letter grades on student effort within a course, subsequent credit hours taken, and the probability of majoring in economics. Their methodology addresses key issues in identifying the causal impact of letter grades: correlation with unobservable factors, such as motivation, and direction of causation. They find no evidence that letter grades influence undergraduate students' course-taking behavior or decision to major in economics. They find that, within a course, the first exam letter grade can affect student performance on the second exam.

Suggested Citation

  • Joyce B. Main & Ben Ost, 2014. "The Impact of Letter Grades on Student Effort, Course Selection, and Major Choice: A Regression-Discontinuity Analysis," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 1-10, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jeduce:v:45:y:2014:i:1:p:1-10
    DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2014.859953
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220485.2014.859953
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220485.2014.859953?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Griffith, Amanda L. & Main, Joyce B., 2019. "First impressions in the classroom: How do class characteristics affect student grades and majors?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 125-137.
    2. Halim,Daniel Zefanya & Powers,Elizabeth T. & Thornton,Rebecca Lynn, 2021. "Gender Differences in Economics Course-Taking and Majoring : Findings from an RCT," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9732, The World Bank.
    3. Hadsell, Lester, 2020. "Not for want of trying: Effort and Success of women in principles of microeconomics," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    4. Li, Hsueh-Hsiang, 2018. "Do mentoring, information, and nudge reduce the gender gap in economics majors?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 165-183.
    5. Luc Bridet & Margaret Leighton, 2015. "The Major Decision: Labor Market Implications of the Timing of Specialization in College," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201510, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    6. Shulamit Kahn & Donna Ginther, 2017. "Women and STEM," NBER Working Papers 23525, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Haggag, Kareem & Patterson, Richard W. & Pope, Nolan G. & Feudo, Aaron, 2021. "Attribution bias in major decisions: Evidence from the United States Military Academy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    8. Lauren Ratliff Santoro & Jonas B. Bunte, 2023. "What Did You Get? Peers, Information, and Student Exam Performance," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 64(3), pages 423-450, May.
    9. Dirk S. Yandell, 2017. "Grade Expectations and Overconfidence: Is Economics Different?," Journal for Economic Educators, Middle Tennessee State University, Business and Economic Research Center, vol. 17(2), pages 18-28, Fall.
    10. Kugler, Adriana D. & Tinsley, Catherine H. & Ukhaneva, Olga, 2021. "Choice of majors: are women really different from men?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jeduce:v:45:y:2014:i:1:p:1-10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/VECE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.