Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments

Damon Clark, David Gill, Victoria Prowse and Mark Rush

Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: Will college students who set goals for themselves work harder and achieve better outcomes? In theory, setting goals can help present-biased students to mitigate their self-control problem. In practice, there is little credible evidence on the causal effects on goal setting for college students. We report the result of two field experiments that involved almost four thousand college students in total. One experiments asked treated students to set goals for performance in the course; the other asked treated students to set goals for a particular task (completing online practice exams). Task-based goals had robust positive effects on the level of task completion, and task-based goals also increased course performance. We also find that performance-based goals had positive but small effects on course performance. We use a theoretical framework that builds on present bias and loss aversion to interpret our results. Since task-based goal setting is low-cost, scalable and logistically simple, we conclude that our findings have important implications for educational practice and future research.

Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-exp
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Related works:
Journal Article: Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence From Field Experiments (2020)
Working Paper: Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments (2018)
Working Paper: Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments (2017)
Working Paper: Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments (2017)
Working Paper: Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:feb:natura:00647

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