Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.

Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practices can forge students' engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students...

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Autores principales:	Tamás Keller, Péter Szakál
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/a7033ba22c194752a063f73d8be66658
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:a7033ba22c194752a063f73d8be666582021-12-02T20:14:37ZNot just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0256960https://doaj.org/article/a7033ba22c194752a063f73d8be666582021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256960https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practices can forge students' engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students of the University of Szeged in Hungary. Our intervention consisted of an automated encouragement message that praised students' past achievements and signaled trust in their success. The treated students received encouragement messages before their exam via two channels: e-mail and SMS message. The control students did not receive any encouragement. Our primary analysis compared the treated and control students' end-of-semester exam grades, obtained from the university's registry. Our secondary analysis explored the difference between the treated and control students' self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety, obtained from an online survey before students' exams. We did not find an average treatment effect on students' exam grades. However, in the subsample of those who answered the endline survey, the treated students reported higher self-efficacy than the control students. The treatment affected students' motivation before their first exam-but not before their second-and did not affect students' test anxiety. Our results indicate that automated encouragement messages sent shortly before exams do not boost students' exam grades, but they do increase self-efficacy. These results contribute to understanding the self-efficacy mechanism through which future encouragement campaigns might exert their effect. We conclude that encouraging students and raising their self-efficacy might create a school climate that better engages students with the academic aspect of school life.Tamás KellerPéter SzakálPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 9, p e0256960 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Tamás Keller Péter Szakál Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
description	Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practices can forge students' engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students of the University of Szeged in Hungary. Our intervention consisted of an automated encouragement message that praised students' past achievements and signaled trust in their success. The treated students received encouragement messages before their exam via two channels: e-mail and SMS message. The control students did not receive any encouragement. Our primary analysis compared the treated and control students' end-of-semester exam grades, obtained from the university's registry. Our secondary analysis explored the difference between the treated and control students' self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety, obtained from an online survey before students' exams. We did not find an average treatment effect on students' exam grades. However, in the subsample of those who answered the endline survey, the treated students reported higher self-efficacy than the control students. The treatment affected students' motivation before their first exam-but not before their second-and did not affect students' test anxiety. Our results indicate that automated encouragement messages sent shortly before exams do not boost students' exam grades, but they do increase self-efficacy. These results contribute to understanding the self-efficacy mechanism through which future encouragement campaigns might exert their effect. We conclude that encouraging students and raising their self-efficacy might create a school climate that better engages students with the academic aspect of school life.
format	article
author	Tamás Keller Péter Szakál
author_facet	Tamás Keller Péter Szakál
author_sort	Tamás Keller
title	Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
title_short	Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
title_full	Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
title_fullStr	Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
title_full_unstemmed	Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
title_sort	not just words! effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/a7033ba22c194752a063f73d8be66658
work_keys_str_mv	AT tamaskeller notjustwordseffectsofalighttouchrandomizedencouragementinterventiononstudentsexamgradesselfefficacymotivationandtestanxiety AT peterszakal notjustwordseffectsofalighttouchrandomizedencouragementinterventiononstudentsexamgradesselfefficacymotivationandtestanxiety
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Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students' exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety.

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