Affirming independence: Exploring mechanisms underlying a values affirmation intervention for first-generation students.

Abstract

First-generation college students (students for whom neither parent has a 4-year college degree) earn lower grades and worry more about whether they belong in college, compared to continuing-generation students (who have at least one parent with a 4-year college degree). We conducted a longitudinal follow-up of participants from a study in which a values-affirmation intervention improved performance in a biology course for first-generation college students, and found that the treatment effect on grades persisted three years later. First-generation students in the treatment condition obtained a GPA that was, on average, .18 points higher than first-generation students in the control condition, three years after values affirmation was implemented (Study 1A). We explored mechanisms by testing if the values-affirmation effects were predicated on first-generation students reflecting on interdependent values (thus affirming their values that are consistent with working-class culture) or independent values (thus affirming their values that are consistent with the culture of higher education). We found that when first-generation students wrote about their independence, they obtained higher grades (both in the semester in which values affirmation was implemented and in subsequent semesters) and felt less concerned about their background. In a separate laboratory experiment (Study 2) we manipulated the extent to which participants wrote about independence and found that encouraging first-generation students to write more about their independence improved their performance on a math test. These studies highlight the potential of having FG students focus on their own independence.

Improving Student Outcomes in Higher Education: The Science of Targeted Intervention

“…Tibbetts and colleagues (2016a) conducted a follow-up study of the Harackiewicz et al (2014a) sample and found that the values affirmation intervention improved FGstudents’ overall postintervention GPAs over the course of three years. They used text analyses to investigate the mechanisms of these long-term effects.…”

“…Recent studies have provided insights into the psychological moderators of values affirmation interventions (Layous et al 2017), as well as the proximal and distal mediators of intervention effects. Work by Tibbetts and colleagues (2016a) demonstrated that the content of the values affirmation essays can provide important clues about their proximal mechanisms, revealing that, for FG students experiencing identity threat due to a cultural mismatch, the benefits of the intervention were mediated by themes of independence. Finally, Brady and colleagues’ (2016) work illuminated a more distal mechanism, that values affirmation interventions can improve long-term outcomes through recursive processes involving students’ propensity to self-affirm under threat.…”

“…Indeed, some of the work at the college level has been implemented in laboratory settings, rather than classrooms, with positive results (Brady et al 2016, Layous et al 2017). Given the recent work showing that the content of values affirmation essays works differently for middle school minority students and FG college students (Shnabel et al 2013, Tibbetts et al 2016a), it is clear that more work is needed to understand how values affirmation works in different contexts and for different groups.…”

“…Indeed, there is an important interplay between laboratory and context-embedded studies: Interventions tested in the lab are scaled up for field tests, which then suggest additional process questions to be tested in the lab, so that the intervention can be refined. For example, after their analyses of values affirmation essays from field studies, Shnabel et al (2013) and Tibbetts et al (2016a) returned to the lab to manipulate writing themes to test their field-driven hypotheses.…”

Interventions for Supporting and Assessing Science Writing Communication: Cases of Asian English Language Learners

“…Smith-Keiling and H.F. Hyun, submitted for publication). Recent use of the LIWC shows the possibility of using analytic programs to seek different cognitions of students in personal writing samples despite ELL barriers (28, 29). …”