An intervention with adolescent girls to promote academic motivation and mental health
An intervention to promote interest in the field of entrepreneurship
Healthy Minds
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Objective. Adolescents living in rural regions of the United States face substantial barriers to accessing mental health services, creating needs for more accessible, non-stigmatizing, briefer interventions. Research suggests that single-session “growth mindset” interventions (GM-SSIs)—which teach the belief that personal traits are malleable through effort—may reduce internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents. However, GM-SSIs have not been evaluated among rural youth, and their effects on internalizing and externalizing problems have not been assessed within a single trial, rendering their relative benefits for different problem types unclear. We examined whether a computerized GM-SSI could reduce depressive symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and conduct problems in adolescent girls from rural areas of the U.S.
Method. Tenth-grade girls (N=222, M age=15.2, 38% white, 25% Black, 29% Hispanic) from four rural, low-income high schools in the Southeastern United States were randomized to receive a 45-minute GM-SSI or a computer-based, active control program, teaching healthy sexual behaviors. Girls self-reported depression symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and conduct problem behaviors at baseline and four-month follow-up.
Results. Relative to girls in the control group, girls receiving the GM-SSI reported significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms ( d=.23) and likelihood of reporting elevated depressive symptoms ( d=.29) from baseline to follow-up. GM-SSI effects were nonsignificant for social anxiety symptoms, although a small effect size emerged in the hypothesized direction ( d=.21), and nonsignificant for change in conduct problems ( d=.01).
Conclusions. Results suggest a free-of-charge, 45-minute GM-SSI may help reduce internalizing distress, especially depression—but not conduct problems—in rural adolescent girls.
Generously Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Background. Students living in rural areas of the United States exhibit lower levels of educational attainment than their suburban counterparts. Innovative interventions are needed to close this educational achievement gap.
Aims. We investigated whether an online growth mindset intervention could be leveraged to promote academic outcomes.
Sample. We tested the mindset intervention in a sample of 222 10th-grade adolescent girls (M age = 15.2; 38% White, 25% Black, 29% Hispanic) from four rural, low-income high schools in the Southeastern United States.
Methods. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the growth mindset intervention, relative to a sexual health programme. We used random sampling and allocation procedures to assign girls to either the mindset intervention (n = 115) or an attention-matched control programme (n = 107). We assessed participants at pre-test, immediate post-test, and 4-month follow-up.
Results. Relative to the control condition, students assigned to the mindset intervention reported stronger growth mindsets at immediate post-test and 4-month follow-up. Although the intervention did not have a total effect on academic attitudes or grades, it indirectly increased motivation to learn, learning efficacy and grades via the shifts in growth mindsets.
Conclusions. Results indicate that this intervention is a promising method to encourage growth mindsets in rural adolescent girls.
Generously Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Despite mounting interest in implicit-theory based growth mindset interventions, this approach has yet to be applied to the domain of entrepreneurship. In the present research, we developed and tested if a growth mindset intervention could be leveraged to promote students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and if this, in turn, predicted career development (i.e., academic interest, career interest, persistence, and performance). We report on our findings, from an Open Science Framework (OSF) pre-registered study, that is a randomized clinical trial implementing a growth mindset intervention. We randomly assigned undergraduate students (N=238) in an introduction to entrepreneurship class to either the growth mindset intervention or to a knowledge-based attention-matched control. Students in the growth mindset intervention, relative to the control, reported greater entrepreneurial self-efficacy and more persistence on their main class project. The intervention also indirectly improved academic and career interest via entrepreneurial self-efficacy. However, the intervention failed to directly or indirectly impact performance on a classroom assignment. And, it worked equally well for males and females. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.
Generously Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation