While gender-based achievement gaps have been widely explored in academic motivation research, gender-related variables such as sexual orientation and other-gender similarity radically shift understandings of these disparities. Recent research has shown that gay men have a notable bachelor's degree attainment advantage over heterosexual men while…

Second-year university students often experience a disconnection with their learning and may feel unmotivated, lack confidence, and are unprepared for the higher expectations and complex concepts of their courses. Their disconnection with their learning can be addressed through deepening the social connections between other second-year students,…

Goal complexes, which are formed by pairing standards of competence strivings with their underlying reasons, are essential to an understanding of achievement goal regulation. This paper examines goal complexes that cross other-approach and other-avoidance goals with the approach-avoidance dimensions of Big Three motives as underlying reasons. 220…

Background: College is a critical life stage for alcohol-related harms to others (AHTOs), gender, and sexual identity. We tested associations between inclusively-defined gender and sexual identities (separately) and AHTOs among college students. Methods: The Healthy Minds Study (n = 8,308) provided data about three AHTOs: (1) babysitting a drunk…

Providing infrastructure to support student-led research teams at research-extensive universities has been an effective way of dramatically increasing the number of research opportunities available to all undergraduates. While cocurricular, team-based programs are able to scale-up and sustain undergraduate research, their ability to promote…

The January 2022 60-Second Survey focused on the availability of different programmatic and mentorship offerings for newly admitted undergraduate and graduate students. In the framework of the survey and report, there is a differentiation between mentor programs and other newly admitted student programming. They prioritize matching newly admitted…

Improving the rate at which individuals enter STEM careers remains a national concern, and there is a critical need for additional research examining the impact of career development programs for undergraduate STEM majors. Most career development studies are grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), which states that students progressing…

Purpose: Writing a thesis is a difficult endeavor for undergraduate students, especially in management careers, due to the highly practical approach of the discipline. Students often find difficult to understand and apply research methods in concrete research projects, so a proper set of teaching-learning strategies is critical. This study aimed…

Research suggests that school climate is a critical component in a student's sense of safety within a school and is the foundation for student-staff relationships. Despite this recognition, school staff demonstrate an insufficient intention to intervene on witnessed acts of gender- and sexuality-based inequity and grapple with discerning what…

College students make job decisions without complete information. As a result, they may rely on misleading heuristics ("interesting jobs pay badly") and pursue options misaligned with their goals. We test whether highlighting job characteristics changes decision making. We find increasing the salience of a job's monetary benefits…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

We integrated perspectives from achievement goal theory and expectancy-value theory to investigate how undergraduate students' (N = 475) achievement motivation might influence their instructional dissent. A latent profile analysis of students' achievement goals, performance self-efficacy, task value, and perceived cost revealed four distinct…

Past research has demonstrated that the reasons underlying students' decisions to engage in academic tasks (i.e., achievement goals) are associated with the experience of test anxiety. Empirical investigations focused on the association between achievement goals and test anxiety have historically been guided by the dichotomous, trichotomous, and…

Background: Student transition to university can be a challenging time. Research suggests that providing space for student reflection and goal setting may facilitate this period of transition. Objective: I describe the "Postcard to my Graduating Self Project," in which psychology students were invited to write postcards to their future…