DISCUSSION

3.1 Descriptive statistics on goals
Table 2 presents some descriptive statistics on the goals that the treated students set and on
how successful on average the treated students were in achieving their goals. Looking at the first
row of Panel I, we see that the vast majority of treated students chose to set at least one goal,
irrespective of whether the goal was performance based or task based. Looking at the second
row of Panel I, we see that on average students in the performance-based goals experiment set
performance goals of ninety percent (as explained in the notes to Table 2, all performance goals
have been converted to percentages of the maximal performance) while on average students in
the task-based goals experiment set task goals of four out of five practice exams. The third
row of Panel I tells us that these goals were generally a little ambitious: achievement lagged
somewhat behind the goals that the students chose to set. Given that the goals were a little
ambitious, many students failed to achieve their goals: the fourth row of Panel I shows that each
performance-based goal was reached by about one-quarter of students while each task-based goal
was reached by about one-half of students. 16 Panels II and III show that the same patterns hold
for both male and female students.
16 Within the performance-based goals experiment, goals and goal achievement varied little according to whether
the students set a goal for their letter grade in the course or set goals for their scores in the two midterm exams
and the final exam.
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