A for effort: Incomplete information and college students’ academic performance

Nicholas Wright () and Puneet Arora

Economics of Education Review, 2022, vol. 88, issue C

Abstract: Students form beliefs about their expected performance based on incomplete information about the past distribution of grades. This may lead students to sub-optimally choose their level of effort and ultimately harm their actual academic performance. Using a field experiment, this paper examines the impact of randomly exposing students to accurate instructor-level information about the past distribution of grades in an introductory economics course. We find that while the intervention had a small positive impact on students’ average test scores, it improved the likelihood of passing the course by 10 percentage points. In addition, the results indicate that moderate-achievers, females, and students from higher-income households are most likely to benefit from treatment. The intervention also favored the students who had high expectations about their performance in the course and those with stronger priors about the expected grade distribution.

Keywords: Incomplete information; Overconfidence; Grade expectations; Academic performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 D8 D9 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:88:y:2022:i:c:s0272775722000152

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2022.102238

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