DRU The Education Effect and the Demography of Risk: Comparing Unschooled and Schooled on Everday Reasoning and Decision-making about Alcohol Use

解释教育效果和风险的人口统计学：比较未受教育和受过教育的人关于健康行为的日常推理和决策技能CO-PI：宾夕法尼亚州立大学的大卫·贝克；秘鲁利马的发展分析小组的马丁·贝纳维德斯；尤金或抽象决策研究的埃伦·彼得斯这个多学科项目将认知科学和决策心理学与跨文化教育社会学相结合，以测试正规教育如何影响用于驾驭日常健康风险的推理和决策技能。基础教育现在正在世界各地迅速扩张，人口统计文献中充斥着表明正规教育与健康之间存在强有力的正相关关系的结果。教育的影响如此之大，以至于教育通常被认为是现代社会人口结构转型的一个主要原因，这包括降低死亡率和生育率，延长寿命。虽然大多数人口学家和健康研究人员承认，正规教育和积极的健康结果之间存在持久而重要的联系，但教育为什么会产生这种影响还没有得到很好的理解，对这种影响是如何发生的进行多学科调查是这项拟议研究的主要学术价值。据假设，学校教育通过教授数学等科目，提高了受教育个人在日常健康风险方面的推理、风险评估和决策技能。拟议项目的创新之处在于，它通过比较未受教育和受过中等教育的成年人的算术能力、认知技能、对风险的推理以及与秘鲁安第斯山脉健康行为相关的决策技能，来测试对教育-S与健康之间关系的解释。在秘鲁安第斯山脉，当地条件允许对教育的效果进行发现-准实验。该项目的更广泛影响包括，有可能为世界上尚未从人口转变中获得健康益处的重要地区设计更有效的教育，而且必须迅速这样做，以摆脱阻碍其长期发展的赤贫。假设学校教育和基本认知技能提高之间的联系，并通过它们改善决策，是考虑学校教育对健康行为的广泛影响的一种新方法，这是人类社会未来面临的一个重大社会问题。许多非政府组织正试图使用各种教育方法来提高个人？贫穷国家的健康决策。如果不清楚如何最大限度地利用有限的教育资源，这些努力就不会产生预期的积极社会变革。

Explaining the Education Effect and the Demography of Risk: Comparing Unschooled and Schooled on Everyday Reasoning and Decision-making Skills about Health BehaviorCO-PIs: David Baker, Penn State University; Martin Benavides, The Group for Analysis of Development, Lima Peru; Ellen Peters, Decision Research, Eugene OR AbstractThis multidisciplinary project combines cognitive science and the psychology of decision making with cross-cultural sociology of education to test how formal schooling influences reasoning and decision-making skills used to navigate everyday health risks. Basic education is now rapidly expanding around the world, and demographic literature brims with results showing the robust positive association between formal schooling and health. The education effect is so large that education is often assumed to be a major cause of the demographic transition of modern society, which consists of reduced mortality and fertility, and longer life spans. While most demographers and health researchers acknowledge the persistent and significant association between formal schooling and positive health outcomes, why education has this influence is not well understood and a multidisciplinary investigation of how this effect occurs is the chief intellectual merit of the proposed study. It is hypothesized that schooling, through the teaching of subjects like mathematics, enhances reasoning, risk-assessment and decision-making skills that schooled individuals bring to bear on everyday health risks. The innovation of the proposed project is that it tests an explanation of education?s association with health by comparing unschooled and moderately schooled adults on their numeracy ability, cognitive skill, reasoning about risk, and decision-making skills related to health behaviors in the Peruvian Andes, where local conditions allow for a found-quasi-experiment on the effects of education. Broader impacts of this project include the potential to design more effective education for the significant parts of the world that have yet to reap the health benefits of the demographic transition and must do so rapidly to emerge out of the extreme poverty that hinders their long-term development. Hypothesizing links between schooling and basic cognitive-skill enhancement and, through them, improved decision making is a new approach to considering the wide impact of schooling on health behavior, a major social issue facing the future of human society. Many non-government organizations are attempting to use various educational approaches to improve individuals? health decisions in poor nations. Without a clear understanding of how to make the most of limited education resources, these efforts will not yield the positive social change envisioned.