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

Damon Clark, David Gill, Victoria Prowse and Mark Rush
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Damon Clark: Department of Economics, UC Irvine and NBER
Mark Rush: Department of Economics, University of Florida

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

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 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). 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.

Keywords: Goal; Goal setting; Higher education; Field experiment; Self-control; Present bias; Time inconsistency; Commitment device; Loss aversion; Reference point; Task-based goal; Performance-based goal; Self-set goal; Performance uncertainty; Overconfidence; Student effort; Student performance; Educational attainment. JEL Classification: I23, C93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-hrm
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Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... gill_prowse_rush.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 (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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