Different Interventions, Similar Effects: Comparing Cost-Reduction and Utility-Value Interventions in College Physics

• In Event: 63.066 - Motivation Interventions: Insights From a Multicomponent Perspective for Theory, Practice, and Research

Abstract

Utility-value interventions, which ask students to relate course material to their lives, have improved students’ academic interest and performance (e.g., Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009). These interventions are grounded in Eccles and colleagues’ (1983) expectancy-value theory, which posits that students who have more value for what they are learning and expect to learn more successfully will have higher motivation and performance. Although promising, the results of utility-value interventions raise two theoretical questions. First, Hulleman et al. (2017) found that utility-value interventions affected some students’ competence-related beliefs. Thus it is unclear whether utility-value interventions sometimes affect other motivational constructs instead of value. Second, it may be useful to intervene on motivational processes besides utility value. Expectancy-value theory posits that if students perceive more cost for engaging with a course (i.e., anticipated negative consequences of completing their coursework, such as frustration), they perform worse and disengage with coursework (Wigfield, Rosenzweig, & Eccles, 2017). Thus one alternative intervention technique is to reduce students’ perceptions of cost for a given course. In this study we compared a utility-value intervention to a newly-developed cost-reduction intervention on students’ grades and self-reported utility value, competence-related beliefs, and cost, in a college physics course.

Participants (n = 148; 26.9% female; 52.2% White, 29.2% Asian/Asian American, 9.3% African American) were randomly assigned to a utility-value intervention, cost-reduction intervention, or a control task. Students completed intervention or control activities online in two sessions one month apart. Intervention prompts asked students to read and evaluate quotations from their peers and write their own quotation. The utility-value intervention asked students to relate course material to their lives in order to perceive course material as useful (Gaspard et al., 2015). The cost-reduction intervention aimed to help students re-interpret their perceptions of challenges in their physics course as more manageable, in order to make them seem less costly (see Walton & Cohen, 2007). Students’ competence-related beliefs, task values, and cost were measured after the intervention or control activities ended (αs = .86-.95). To assess fidelity, written quotations were coded for references to course challenges/cost and relevance/utility.

Fidelity checks confirmed that students wrote about relevance/utility more often in the utility-value versus the cost-reduction intervention, and vice versa. However, regression analyses with orthogonal contrast codes revealed no differences between the interventions. Both promoted students’ course grades compared to the control group, beta = 0.14, p = .01. Furthermore, interactions showed that intervention effects were stronger for students with lower initial course achievement, beta = -0.20, p < .001; for these students the estimated difference in grades (at -1SD from the mean for prior achievement) was approximately 8 percentage points between either intervention condition and control. Initially lower-achieving students also reported higher competence-related beliefs, beta = -0.15, p = .01, and lower cost, beta = 0.18, p = .02 in either intervention condition versus control.

Results demonstrate that both interventions improved college students’ physics performance. However, unexpectedly, the different interventions affected students through similar psychological processes. It appears that the motivational processes induced by targeted expectancy-value interventions can be broader than expected in some learning contexts.

Authors

• Emily Quinn Rosenzweig, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Allan L. Wigfield, University of Maryland - College Park

• Chris S. Hulleman, University of Virginia