# Effects of personality traits in predicting grade retention of Brazilian students

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05767 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05767/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 1 of its 10 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)

## Abstract (arXiv)

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.