The Effect of Effort and Feedback on the Formation of Student Attitudes

Abstract

The effect of two factors, (1) degree of effort exerted studying a subject, and (2) written feedback from the instructor, on the cognitive and affective attitudes students formed toward the subject and assignment was determined in four university classes. The students, unaware that they were subjects in an experiment, received high or low effort assignments and high or no praise comments. Two assignments were given to each student from two different materials to assure counterbalancing of teacher, classroom selection, and time of day effects. The effort by feedback (2 × 2) multivariate analysis of covariance and class by feedback (4 × 2) ANOV. As showed that students who received high praise and completed the high effort assignments formed significantly more positive attitudes than students in the other three groups.