Despite the relevance of noncognitive skills (i.e. soft skills) for individual development and for certain forms of employment, they tend to be overlooked in studies centred on educational performance. This study brings an additional contribution to the growing interest on these skills by exploring their main determinants and by providing an additional understanding of how they are influenced by socio-economic and family background. To this end, a multiobjective programming model has been developed, whose coefficients are instantiated by the results of several econometric estimations, in which distinct (and conflicting) aspects of multiple soft skills are considered. Hence, by coupling econometric with multiobjective optimisation modelling approaches we provide an overarching framework for assessing the trade-offs between the different dimensions of noncognitive skills. Data from the most populated region of Spain are used. Overall, our findings highlight the trade-off between different soft skills, which are particularly conditioned by students’ gender.

尽管非认知技能（即软技能）与个人发展和某些形式的就业相关，但在以教育绩效为中心的研究中，它们往往被忽视。这项研究通过探索这些技能的主要决定因素，并通过提供对它们如何受到社会经济和家庭背景的影响的额外理解，为人们对这些技能日益增长的兴趣做出了额外贡献。为此，开发了一个多目标规划模型，其系数由几个计量经济估计的结果实例化，其中考虑了多种软技能的不同（和冲突）方面。因此，通过将计量经济学与多目标优化建模方法相结合，我们提供了一个总体框架来评估非认知技能的不同维度之间的权衡。使用来自西班牙人口最多的地区的数据。总的来说，我们的研究结果强调了不同软技能之间的权衡，这尤其受学生性别的限制。