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

解释教育的影响和风险的人口统计学：比较未受教育和受教育的关于健康行为的日常推理和决策技能CO-PI：大卫贝克，宾夕法尼亚州立大学;马丁贝纳维德斯，发展分析小组，利马秘鲁;艾伦·彼得斯，决策研究，尤金或摘要这个多学科的项目结合了认知科学和心理学的决策与交叉，教育的文化社会学，以测试正规教育如何影响用于应对日常健康风险的推理和决策技能。 基础教育目前正在全世界迅速扩展，人口统计学文献中有大量结果表明，正规教育与健康之间存在着强有力的正相关关系。教育的影响是如此之大，以至于教育往往被认为是现代社会人口结构转型的一个主要原因，其中包括死亡率和生育率的降低以及寿命的延长。虽然大多数人口统计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和重要的联系，但为什么教育具有这种影响力并没有得到很好的理解，并且对这种影响如何发生的多学科调查是拟议研究的主要智力价值。据推测，学校教育通过教授数学等科目，提高了受教育者应对日常健康风险的推理、风险评估和决策技能。该项目的创新之处在于它测试了对教育的解释。在秘鲁安第斯山脉，通过比较未受教育和中等教育的成年人的计算能力、认知技能、风险推理和与健康行为相关的决策技能，研究了健康与健康的关系，当地条件允许对教育的影响进行发现准实验。这一项目的更广泛影响包括，有可能为世界上尚未从人口结构转型中获得健康惠益、而且必须迅速摆脱阻碍其长期发展的极端贫困的大部分地区设计更有效的教育。假设学校教育和基本认知技能的提高之间存在联系，并通过它们改善决策，这是一种新的方法来考虑学校教育对健康行为的广泛影响，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。如果不清楚地了解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所设想的积极的社会变革。

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.