Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Educational Psychology, Leadership, and Higher Education

First Committee Member

Vanessa Vongkulluksn

Second Committee Member

Jonathan Hilpert

Third Committee Member

Lisa Bendixen

Fourth Committee Member

Peter Wiens

Number of Pages

79

Abstract

College is a time of transitional changes that may come with academic challenges for undergraduate college students. Academic challenges, such as failures or setbacks, may also lead to fixed thinking processes, which could also hinder students’ self-efficacy, motivation, and persistence towards accomplishing their academic goals, such as passing classes and graduating college. To help student motivation, growth mindset interventions have been implemented into educational settings and found to be effective in K-12 school settings by influencing students’ beliefs that a challenging task is attainable. For this reason, in this study, I aimed to find if growth mindset interventions would also be effective among undergraduate college students. This study took place over the course of the beginning, mid, and end of fall 2022 semester. I recruited undergraduate college students from a large southwestern University. Students got randomly placed in either a growth mindset or exercise group and completed activities. I hypothesized that students in the intervention group would have higher growth mindsets and self-efficacy than the control group. However, the results were contradictory to the hypothesis, as the control group had higher growth mindsets and self-efficacy scores than the intervention group. Yet both groups did start off with higher growth mindsets, which shows some effectiveness in intervention implemented into a higher-education setting. Despite the results, it is also important to acknowledge the sample size and the plan to recruit more participants to add to the current data and further evaluate the results.

Disciplines

Educational Psychology

File Format

pdf

File Size

1700 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Available for download on Friday, May 15, 2026


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