Can a written goal-setting intervention increase academic performance? A rigorous replication
Why do some university students succeed and others do not? Understanding the factors that drive success or failure are important because of the large time and financial investments made by students and their funders.Furthermore, the number of students in Europe is steadily increasing. For example, in Swiss universities, the number of students has risen by roughly 143% in 30 years (Office, 2020b). In parallel, only 26% of enrolled students in Switzerland graduate in the expected 3 years, this number rises to 70% after 5 years, and 20% never graduate. (Office, 2020a).
Recently, a written goal-setting intervention has shown to increase academic performance by up to 30% and student retention rates by 35%, while having a low cost of delivery because it is administered online (Morisano et al., 2010; Schippers et al., 2020; Schippers et al., 2015). In this study,we will attempt to replicate the findings of these threestudies to examine the efficacy of this intervention. A replication is warranted because there are several severemethodological problems which preclude the accurate assessment of the treatment effect.