Assessing and Predicting Student Treatment Compliance in a Utility-Value Intervention Study

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Advances in Utility-Value Intervention Research

Abstract

The study of treatment fidelity including students’ compliance with the intervention material is essential to make valid claims about the effectiveness of motivational interventions. The current study assessed students’ treatment compliance in two classroom-based motivational interventions (writing a text or commenting on quotations about the personal utility of mathematics) through coding students’ essays. First, the degree to which students complied with the instructions, measured through three fidelity indicators (positive argumentation, personal connections, and innovative argumentation) was described. The fidelity criteria were then combined into a single compliance index. Students’ conscientiousness and motivational predispositions predicted treatment compliance positively for both interventions, but students’ cognitive ability and gender played a role only for the intervention based on free text writing.

Authors

• Brigitte Maria Brisson, Tuebingen University

• Chris S. Hulleman, University of Virginia

• Hanna Gaspard, University of Tübingen

• Isabelle Häfner, University of Tübingen

• Barbara Flunger, University of Tübingen

• Anna-Lena Dicke, University of California - Irvine

• Ulrich Trautwein, University of Tubingen

• Benjamin Nagengast, University of Tübingen