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

Damon Clark (), David Gill, Victoria Prowse and Mark Rush
Additional contact information
Damon Clark: University of California, Irvine

No 10283, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Will college students who set goals for themselves work harder and perform better? In theory, setting goals can help time-inconsistent students to mitigate their self-control problem. In practice, there is little credible evidence on the causal effects of goal setting for college students. We report the results of two field experiments that involved almost four thousand college students in total. One experiment 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). We find that performance-based goals had no discernible impact on course performance. In contrast, task-based goals had large and robust positive effects on the level of task completion, and task-based goals also increased course performance. Further empirical analysis indicates that the increase in task completion induced by setting task-based goals caused the increase in course performance. We also find that task-based goals were more effective for male students. We develop new theory that reinforces our empirical results by suggesting two key reasons why task-based goals might be more effective than performance-based goals: overconfidence and uncertainty about performance. Since task-based goal setting is low-cost, scaleable and logistically simple, we conclude that our findings have important implications for educational practice and future research.

Keywords: overconfidence; performance uncertainty; self-set goal; performance-based goal; task-based goal; reference point; loss aversion; commitment device; time inconsistency; present bias; self-control; field experiment; higher education; goal setting; goal; student effort; student performance; educational attainment; MOOC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-hrm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020, 102 (4), 648-663

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10283.pdf (application/pdf)

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 (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)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10283

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().