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

ABSTRACT: 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 anal

SUBMITTER: Keller T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8443032 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature