AVOIDING FATIGUE IN WORKPLACE
New research by Francesca Gino and colleagues
finds students perform best on standardized tests at the start of the school
day. The findings also provide insight into how workers can avoid cognitive fatigue
in the office.
Here’s a tip for
parents of school-aged children. If your kids must take a standardized test,
it’s best to do so either first thing in the morning or right after recess.
On average, students
perform best on tests at the start of the school day. And for every hour later
in the day, their tests scores decrease. Why? Because they suffer from
cognitive fatigue. In other words, their brains get tired. However, test scores
do increase slightly when students get to take a short break immediately before
taking a test.
These are among the
key findings of a new study, “Cognitive fatigue influences students’
performance on standardized tests.” Published in the February 15 edition of Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, the study was authored by Hans Henrik Sievertsen, a
postdoctoral researcher at the Danish National Centre for Social Research;
Francesca Gino, the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at
Harvard Business School; and Marco Piovesan, an associate economics professor
at the University of Copenhagen and a former research fellow at HBS.
The research provides
food for thought as policymakers debate the efficacy and fairness of education
initiatives like No Child Left Behind, the 2001 United States Act of Congress requiring federally
funded public schools to administer statewide standardized tests annually, and Race to the Top, a more recent initiative that depends
largely on student test scores to measure teacher efficacy.
“There are all sorts
of debates in the United States and, more generally, across the globe about how
to improve the quality of students’ life in school—and make sure schools offer
the most supportive conditions possible for students to learn and perform well
in their school activities and tests,” Gino says. “Often these debates do not
carefully consider the influence of external factors that teachers or parents
can’t control.”
An enormous set of student data
The research team
convened early in 2015 when Gino, a behavioral scientist, was working on a
project about how time of day affects job interviews. (Note to job-hunters: Try
to book a morning interview slot.) “As it turns out, the later one interviews
in the day, the lower the score one gets on the interview, as the people conducting
the interviews become tired and more cynical throughout the day,” Gino says.
Familiar with Gino’s
time-of-day research, Sievertsen and Piovesan approached her with an enormous
set of data from Denmark, which introduced a nationwide student testing program
in 2010. Appropriately called the National Tests, the program requires all
students in Danish public schools to take a series of standardized tests from
second grade through eighth grade—roughly age eight through age 15. As it
happens, students are randomly assigned to take their tests at different times
of day, some in the morning and others in the afternoon. The researchers
collected the results of all 2 million tests taken in the school years
2009-2010 and 2012-2013.
“This seemed like a
great opportunity to test the effects of fatigue in a different context, with
very important implications for parents, teachers, and policymakers,” Gino
says.
It also happens that
most Danish students have scheduled breaks during the school day, typically
just before 10 a.m. and noon, which last between 20 to 30 minutes. This gave
the researchers a chance to gauge whether recess might thwart the effects of
cognitive fatigue.
Like Gino, Piovesan
wondered whether related research on adult employees would apply to young
students. “I was interested in studying the effect of breaks and their
recharging power,” Piovesan says. “In previous papers I have investigated the
effect of temptations on productivity. What my colleagues and I found is that a
break devoted to satisfy our needs—coffee, cigarettes, Facebook, etc.—can
increase productivity.”
Results and implications
The researchers
crunched the data to show the difference in average tests scores for tests
taken between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. They controlled for several external factors,
including parental education, birth weight, birthday, the test subject, the
quality of the school, and the day of the week.
The results were
stark. The average test scores were highest at 8 a.m., slowly decreasing, as
the day progressed, to the lowest average scores at 1 p.m. However, there were
two exceptions: slight bumps in the scores for the tests taken at 10 a.m. and
noon—the times immediately following breaks.
The analysis also
revealed that the breaks and time of day affected the lowest-performing
students significantly more than the highest-performing students. “This finding
has important implications, as it suggests that having breaks prior to testing
is especially important in schools with students who are struggling,” Gino
says.
The findings indicate
school administrations would do well to standardize the time of day that
students take standardized tests. But barring that, the research at least
highlights the important role of time of day.
“I see two potential
implications,” says Sievertsen. “One, as time of day has an effect, and for
some more than others, we should consider whether the structure of the school
day is ideal. Should we have more breaks to ensure that low-performing children
can recover, for instance? Two, in accountability systems we often compare and
evaluate based on test scores. We should be careful in case there are any
systematic differences between schools and classes. Do some schools tend to
have more tests in the morning than others?”
The research also
holds lessons for adults in the corporate world. Bottom line: Managers need to
encourage employees to take breaks—and take breaks themselves.
“For many management and
knowledge-worker positions, as well as many other jobs across industries, there
are no mandatory breaks. Individuals have to decide for themselves whether to
pause, take a break and recharge,” Gino says. “Virtually everyone in such jobs
recognizes the performance benefits of water-cooler conversations and agrees
that people need to take breaks throughout the day, get enough sleep, and take
vacations.”
Yet many of us don’t
practice what we preach, she acknowledges. So managers can set an example by
taking breaks and vacations and encouraging their employees to do the same.
Research shows that the restorative benefits of a short break are even greater
when people get out of the office for a bit.
“So don’t have lunch
at your desk,” Gino says. “Take a short walk outside, especially in a park. It
will put you in a better mood and recharge you, allowing you to get more done
and help you perform better on the job.”
by Carmen Nobel
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-it-s-best-to-take-tests-early-in-the-day?cid=spmailing-12705690-WK%20Newsletter%202-24-2016%20(1)-February%2024,%202016
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