School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 Dec;94(4):1177-1191. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12711. Epub 2024 Jul 29.
An earlier study in a school in England found that a series of brief values affirmation writing exercises, performed over the course of a school year by students aged 11-14, increased the mathematics attainment of students of low socioeconomic status (SES).
This pre-registered follow-up of the original study aims to investigate the long-term effects of values affirmation on low-SES students' attainment.
The sample consisted of all students in the analytical sample of the original study who remained at the school and for whom the necessary data were available, N = 409 (95 low-SES).
The students' results in high-stakes national standardized assessments at age 16, taken two to four years after the affirmation, were analysed.
The evidence did not support the pre-registered hypotheses that values affirmation would raise the attainment of low-SES students in mathematics and English. However, exploratory analyses suggested that for low-SES students in two of the three-year groups, the intervention increased Attainment 8, a broad policy-relevant measure of academic attainment, and increased the attainment of boys in English (in particular English Literature) but reduced the corresponding attainment of girls.
The results suggest that the benefits of values affirmation can differ by student cohort and by school subject and that they might be time-limited in some circumstances. This suggests a set of hypotheses that future research could test in order to advance understanding of when values affirmation is, and is not, successful for school students over a sustained period.
英国一所学校的早期研究发现，11-14 岁学生在一学年内进行一系列简短的价值观肯定写作练习，可提高社会经济地位较低（SES）学生的数学成绩。
本研究是对原始研究的预先注册后续研究，旨在调查价值观肯定对 SES 较低学生成绩的长期影响。
样本包括原始研究分析样本中留在学校且有必要数据的所有学生，N=409（95 名 SES 较低的学生）。
分析了学生在肯定两年至四年后参加的高风险全国标准化评估中的成绩。
证据不支持预先注册的假设，即价值观肯定会提高 SES 较低学生在数学和英语方面的成绩。然而，探索性分析表明，对于三个三年组中的两个组的 SES 较低的学生，干预措施提高了 8 级成绩，这是一个广泛的与政策相关的学术成绩衡量标准，提高了男生在英语（特别是英语文学）方面的成绩，但降低了女生在英语方面的相应成绩。
结果表明，价值观肯定的好处可能因学生群体、学校科目和某些情况下的时间限制而有所不同。这提出了一系列假设，未来的研究可以进行测试，以深入了解价值观肯定在何种情况下对学生在持续时间内的成功，以及在何种情况下不成功。
