Fortunately, talk is cheap: Commitment language is associated with academic success in college

Sunday, April 27th, Denver, CU

Elie ChingYen Yu, Heidi L. Andrade, David W. Franklin, Angela M. Lui, Jason Bryer

Abstract The impact of goal setting on self-regulated learning (SRL) has been established by educational psychology research, while counseling psychology research has documented the importance of goal commitment strength. This study of students’ written reflections on their SRL examines the associations between commitment strength, motivation, and GPA. We analyzed 312 essays collected from newly enrolled, traditional and non-traditional college students who took a SRL survey with feedback, and were then prompted to commit to strategies for becoming more self-regulated. Essays were coded in terms of commitment strength, operationalized as intention and level of specificity of goals. Results show most students used little commitment language, but those who did had higher GPAs.