Selecting and Striving for Goals

Selecting and striving for academic goals are key to a student’s success; but goal commitment is vulnerable to moderating factors. Those moderating factors include hope, particularly agency hope (confidence in one’s abilities; Snyder, 2002). Oettingen and Gollwitzer (2002) proposed that a mental contrasting (MC) self-regulation strategy (contrasting future positive outcomes with current reality) could impact goal commitment by drawing on the student’s existing agency hope. To date this prediction has not been tested. 99 university students selected an academic goal and conducted either an MC or control exercise. Subjects completed agency hope scales before and after treatment and goal commitment scales following treatment. It was predicted that goal commitment scores would be greater for the MC group than for the control group; and that the treatment would not produce a change in agency hope scores from pre-test to post-test. The control group reported higher goal commitment scores, and both groups’ agency hope scores increased following their MC or Control exercise, with a near-significant difference between the two groups. Study limitations and future research directions are discussed. Selecting and Striving for Academic Goals 3 Selecting and Striving for Academic Goals In any given semester, undergraduate students are busy with exams, quizzes, assignments, and projects. Each activity can take days or even weeks to complete. University Learning Skills Centres list smart goal setting as the first strategy for managing these various assignments and deadlines (Western University Learning Skills Services, personal communication, September 13, 2013). Many students heed the advice and set academic goals at the beginning of the year, but their commitment to those goals can wane as the semester progresses. Competing priorities and fluctuating levels of hope and efficacy can eat away at commitment to those goals. As deadlines loom, students may be forced to reconsider their ability to achieve their academic goals. This means that they must re-evaluate the effort required to attain their goal versus the likelihood that effort will produce success. Goals that students were once strongly committed to may need to be replaced by goals that may be easier to obtain but are not as central to academic success. Students often engage in various techniques –or self-regulation strategies– to sustain their goal-directed behaviours. They will set to-do lists, promise not to watch TV until they’ve finished reading a chapter, or visualize what it would be like to get an A on a paper. If these techniques are not chosen wisely, however, they can meet with mixed success; visualizing a post-A celebration does not put words on a page. Further, these strategies are vulnerable to fluctuating levels of hope and self-efficacy. For example, after completing a to-do list, a student may realize how much effort will be required to complete her tasks, feel defeated, and abandon all hope of achieving a high grade. The present study will look at the relationship between hope, the use of self-regulation strategies, and a student’s commitment toward a self-selected academic goal. To begin, consider Selecting and Striving for Academic Goals 4 the question: If academic goals are so vulnerable to mediating factors such as hope and selfregulation, why should students even set goals in the first place? Importance of Goals Research into the relationship between academic goals and academic achievement has found remarkably consistent results: that about 40% of the variance in final grades can be accounted for by grade goals (Diseth & Kobbeltvedt, 2010; Zimmerman, Bandura, & MartinezPons, 1992; Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994). Academic goals are considered achievement goals, which are detailed objectives designed to focus individuals toward specific outcomes (Diseth & Kobbeltvedt, 2010). Under the umbrella of achievement goals are mastery goals (i.e. goal to learn and acquire a skill) and performance goals (which can be considered ego-involved or competitive) (Morisano & Locke, 2012). Both mastery and performance goals can be considered as either approach goals (e.g. “I would like to achieve an A in this class”) or avoidance goals (e.g. “I’d like to not be scrambling to finish this essay”; Diseth & Kobbeltvedt, 2010; Morisano & Locke, 2012). Researchers are also beginning to look at how academic goals can be set with multiple components including major and minor goals, or as a combination of mastery/performance and approach/avoidance (e.g. “I’d like to memorize this Abnormal Psychology chapter in order to avoid failing the test”). Additionally, studies are also beginning to consider other factors such as age, perfectionism, and subconscious motivations (Morisano & Locke, 2012). Setting an academic goal provides students with a specific objective which, according to Bandura’s social cognitive theory, causes an affective and cognitive response (e.g. excitement and anticipation) which will drive one’s performance toward an identified goal (see summary Zimmerman et al., 1992). Setting a goal affects behaviour in three ways: goals provide focus on Selecting and Striving for Academic Goals 5 goal-directed behaviours, and support students in avoiding distractions; goals increase students’ effort so that it is on par with task difficulty; and goals cause students to persist in their commitment to their goal-directed behaviour (Latham & Locke, 1991; Morisano & Locke, 2012). Goal setting theory. Locke and Latham (2002) proposed a formal explanatory model to explain their goal setting theory (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Goal setting theory diagram. (Locke, E., & Latham, G. P. (2002), p. 714. There are two important attributes to goals: the first attribute is content, which is comprised of goal difficulty and goal specificity. These can be seen as subsets of “Goal Core”. When studying the relationship between goal difficulty and performance, Locke and Latham found difficulty effect sizes (d) ranging from . 52 to . 82 (Locke & Latham, 2002). All studies agree that as difficulty increases, so does performance, and that there is a maximal return on goal difficulty, after which at a certain point of difficulty (for example at individual limits in ability), performance either levels off or decreases. The second component of the goal content attribute is Goal Core * Specificity * Difficulty Performance Satisfaction with Performance Moderators * Goal Commitment * Self Efficacy * Intensity Mechanisms * Choice * Effort Willingness to Commit to new Challenges Selecting and Striving for Academic Goals 6 goal specificity, which can range from “do one’s best” to a specific measurable outcome. Just as “do one’s best” is far too general to predict performance, specificity has not been found to be a reliable predictor of performance when measured alone. By adding specificity to difficult goals, expected performance requirements are made clear, performance improves, and outcome variability is reduced (Locke & Latham, 2002). When selecting an academic goal, participants in this study will be asked to describe a specific goal that is both challenging and realistic to achieve in a specified timeframe, thus attempting to elicit both specificity and optimal goal difficulty. The other attribute in a goal is intensity, or the effort involved in the mental process of goal striving (Latham & Locke, 1991). In this model, intensity appears as a “Moderator” of goals. The most common way of studying intensity is to look at goal commitment, specifically, the moderating effect that commitment has on the pursuit of goals. Goal Commitment Goal commitment plays a central role in Locke & Latham’s goal setting theory. One hint at the importance is the numerous times researchers reference a direct quote from Lock, Latham and Erez’s seminal paper (1988) in which they state “it is virtually axiomatic that if there is no commitment to goals, then goal setting does not work” (p. 23). Much like the three ways that setting goals promotes goal-directed behaviour (focus, effort, and persistence), committing to a goal leads to: refusal to abandon the goal, persistence in pursuing the goal, and the resolve to sustain the effort required to achieve the goal (Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, Wright, & DeShon, 2001b; Latham & Locke, 1991; Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001). Goal commitment can both be impacted by goal attributes as well as affect subsequent goal pursuit performance. Goal attributes that can impact commitment include: goal Selecting and Striving for Academic Goals 7 attractiveness (i.e. how appealing is the outcome), goal importance, and one’s confidence that one’s actions will result in attaining the goal (Latham & Locke, 1991; Morisano & Locke, 2012). Commitment can both impact goal pursuit performance directly as well as act as a moderator. In the direct impact view, there will be a significant difference in effort made by someone with high goal commitment versus low goal commitment in striving toward a goal. For difficult goals, those with high goal commitment are likely to make more of an effort, whereas those with low goal commitment are likely to put little effort toward attaining a goal they don’t care about. For easy goals, those with low commitment are likely to make more of an effort in order to give themselves a sense of accomplishment; where high commitment individuals are likely to discouraged by a goal requiring less effort than they’re willing to put in (i.e. too easy, not worth the effort; Latham & Locke, 1991). In the moderator view, goal performance is moderated by commitment, with high commitment acting as a stronger predictor of performance. Given the importance of goal setting in academic achievement, and the moderating role that goal commitment has on performance, this study will measure goal commitment as a key dependent variable. But how do you measure goal commitment? How to measure goal commitm