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BMC Public Health
Published in: BMC Public Health 1/2023

Open Access 01-12-2023 | Research

The impact of boarding schools on the development of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities in adolescents

Authors: Fang Chang, Yanan Huo, Songyan Zhang, Hang Zeng, Bin Tang

Published in: BMC Public Health | Issue 1/2023

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Abstract

Background

Since China adopted a policy to eliminate rural learning centers, boarding has become an important feature of the current rural student community. However, there is a lack of consensus on the impact of boarding schools on students' cognitive and non-cognitive development. This study investigates the effect of boarding schools on the development of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of junior high school students in rural northwest China.

Methods

Using a sample of 5,660 seventh-grade students from 160 rural junior high schools across 19 counties, we identify a causal relationship between boarding and student abilities with the instrumental variables (IV) approach.

Results

The results suggest that boarding positively influences memory and attention, while it has no significant effect on other cognitive abilities such as reasoning, transcription speed, and accuracy. Furthermore, we find no significant association between boarding and the development of non-cognitive skills.

Conclusions

Given the widespread prevalence of boarding schools in rural regions, our study highlights the growing importance of improving school management to promote the development of students’ cognitive abilities and integrating the development of non-cognitive or social-emotional abilities into students’ daily routines.
Footnotes
1
WISC-IV is a clinical instrument created by David Wechsler in the United States. It is utilized to individually evaluate the intelligence of children between the aged 6 and 16 years and is internationally recognized as one of the most authoritative and valid personal intelligence tests. It was published in 1949 and updated to the fourth edition (WISC-IV) in 2003. In 2007, Prof. Houcan Zhang of the School of Psychology at Beijing Normal University, introduced the fourth edition to China. Leveraging Chinese census data, 1100 people were proportionally sampled from 12 provinces in mainland China, with 100 people in each age group, to establish the Chinese version of the norm (with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15). Resulting in a calculated mean of 88.258 and a standard deviation of 10.948 for the students in our study’s samples. The average reliability coefficients of each synthetic score of the scale ranged from 0.87 to 0.97, meeting the standards set by the original American version. For this paper, the results of the Wechsler test were adjusted according to the Chinese norm [38].
 
2
Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices is designed by the British psychologist Raven in 1938 designed for people over age of 5.5 with normal intellectual development. The norms used in this paper are from the 1989 version (a sample of 5,108 students aged between 5 and 70 underwent testing to determine China’s Raven’s norm for the Raven test, with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15) [41], as no updated norms have been established specifically for the Chinese population. Related studies in China have also used this test [42‐44]. The split-half and retest reliabilities of the Raven test were 0.95 (p < 0.1) for the single-sample test and 0.82 (p < 0.1) for the retest. Concurrent validity was 0.71 (P < 0.1), and predictive validity was 0.45 (P < 0.1).
 
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Metadata
Title
The impact of boarding schools on the development of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities in adolescents
Authors
Fang Chang
Yanan Huo
Songyan Zhang
Hang Zeng
Bin Tang
Publication date
01-12-2023
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Public Health / Issue 1/2023
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2458
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-16748-8

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