Scaling Up Self-Affirmation: The Theory and the Method

• In Event: Scaling Up a Social-Psychological Intervention to Combat Stereotype Threat and Narrow Achievement Gaps

Abstract

Objectives

This is among the first replications of the Cohen et al. (2006; 2009) study (see also Dee, 2011), and is the first to scale up the intervention across a district-wide cohort of 7th grade students. The study addresses important questions regarding the overall impacts and scalability of the intervention. Our results reveal the impacts on students’ test score outcomes and grade point averages (GPAs), and speak to our experiences scaling up the intervention.

Perspectives

Most educational interventions involve reforms of curriculum, instruction, or school and classroom organization. However, recent empirical evidence and theory highlights the promise of several social-psychological interventions aimed at boosting the academic outcomes of students historically underserved by our schools (Cohen et al., 2006; 2009; Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009; Walton & Cohen, 2011; Yeager & Walton, 2011). In this case, we target persistent racial/ethnic academic performance gaps between African American and Latino students and their white counterparts within the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD).

Methods

Across two school years, 2011-12 and 2012-13, within each of 11 participating schools, we assigned at random half of the 7th grade students to receive a self-affirming writing exercise in which they selected from a list two or three important values or things, such as being a good athlete or being a good friend. The students were then asked to write a brief expressive essay about the personal importance of values they selected. The other half of the students received a similar intervention, which asked them to identify two or three values from the list that were not important to them, and to write about why the values or things may be important to someone else. These exercises replicated, as precisely as possible, procedures previously used by Cohen et al., (2009; 2006).

Our randomized field trial addressed: whether the intervention narrows gaps between minority and white students on tests and GPA; how impacts vary across school contexts; what psychological mechanisms reported by students help us understand how the intervention works; and how consistently teachers implemented the protocol. Given the randomized design and the replication of the procedure across 11 schools, this methodology provides strong causal evidence of the intervention’s impacts and variability across sites.

Data Sources

Our data include math and reading outcomes on the Wisconsin Knowledge Concepts Examination (WKCE), reading, language, and math scores from the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), and students’ 7th grade GPAs. We administered a fall student survey measuring psychological mechanisms we theorized would moderate or mediate the intervention’s effects. In addition, our analyses of implementation fidelity include data from teacher surveys, student participation rates, field notes, and content analyses of student responses to the exercises.

Results/Scientific Significance

Our perspective is that the next steps to understanding the promise of social-psychological interventions, such as the self-affirmation exercise tested here, are to replicate the interventions at scale, understand the contexts under which they “work,” and gain greater insight into the social and psychological mechanisms that explain their impacts. Our results, presented here, begin that process.

Author

• Geoffrey D. Borman, University of Wisconsin - Madison