 All pain and no gain: When goal setting leads to more effort but no gains in test scoresAsad Islam, Sungoh Kwon, Eema Masood, Nishith Prakash, Shwetlena Sabarwal and Deepak Saraswat Economics of Education Review, 2024, vol. 103, issue C Abstract: We conducted an at-scale randomized control trial among 18,281 secondary students in Tanzania to examine the effects of self-set academic goals on students’ efforts and academic outcomes. We also tested the impact of combining goal setting with non-financial rewards. We found that goal-setting had a significant positive effect on self-reported student time use, study effort, and self-discipline, along with a positive but statistically insignificant impact on test performance. We also found that combining goal setting with recognition awards for achieving the goals did not demonstrate any complementary effects. Heterogeneity analysis suggested that goal-setting had a higher impact on test performance for students in the middle of the distribution of baseline learning levels. We also found that the impact of the treatment did not vary significantly across students’ gender, socioeconomic background, or type of chosen goals. Keywords: Goal-setting; Recognition rewards; Student efforts; Zanzibar (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:103:y:2024:i:c:s0272775724000888 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102594 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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