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

Damon Clark, David Gill, Victoria Prowse and Mark Rush

No 23638, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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 large and robust positive effects on the level of task completion, and task-based goals also increased course performance. Further analysis indicates that the increase in task completion induced by setting task-based goals caused the increase in course performance. We also find that performance-based goals had positive but small effects on course performance. We use theory that builds on present bias and loss aversion to interpret our results. 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.

JEL-codes: C93 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-exp
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Published as Damon Clark & David Gill & Victoria Prowse & Mark Rush, 2020. "Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence From Field Experiments," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 648-663, October.
Published as Damon Clark & David Gill & Victoria Prowse & Mark Rush, 2020. "Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence From Field Experiments," The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol 102(4), pages 648-663.

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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 (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 (2016)
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