Effects of personality traits in predicting grade retention of Brazilian students

Carmen Melo Toledo; Guilherme Mendes Bassedon; Jonathan Batista Ferreira; Lucka de Godoy Gianvechio; Carlos Guatimosim; Felipe Maia Polo; Renato Vicente

arXiv · 2107.05767

Effects of personality traits in predicting grade retention of Brazilian students

Carmen Melo Toledo·Guilherme Mendes Bassedon·Jonathan Batista Ferreira·Lucka de Godoy Gianvechio·Carlos Guatimosim·Felipe Maia Polo·Renato Vicente

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Abstract

Student's grade retention is a key issue faced by many education systems, especially those in developing countries. In this paper, we seek to gauge the relevance of students' personality traits in predicting grade retention in Brazil. For that, we used data collected in 2012 and 2017, in the city of Sertaozinho, countryside of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The surveys taken in Sertaozinho included several socioeconomic questions, standardized tests, and a personality test. Moreover, students were in grades 4, 5, and 6 in 2012. Our approach was based on training machine learning models on the surveys' data to predict grade retention between 2012 and 2017 using information from 2012 or before, and then using some strategies to quantify personality traits' predictive power. We concluded that, besides proving to be fairly better than a random classifier when isolated, personality traits contribute to prediction even when using socioeconomic variables and standardized tests results.

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Carmen Melo Toledo, Guilherme Mendes Bassedon, Jonathan Batista Ferreira, Lucka de Godoy Gianvechio, Carlos Guatimosim, Felipe Maia Polo, Renato Vicente. 2021-07-12. Effects of personality traits in predicting grade retention of Brazilian students. https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05767

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