psychology research project

C

POST-SECONDARY EXPECTATIONS IN

YOUNGER GRADESPsychology Research Project

By Harrison Park | Stevens Qiu

HypothesisStudents who are unaware of post-secondary grade point averages for admissions are more likely to exhibit overconfidence and select prestigious universities as their survey answer.

Subject Selection

We requested 15-20 students in each of the grades from 8 to 10, to participate in our survey by going to classes after the bell and spotting students throughout the school during lunch time. We used only grade 8-10s because we believe they would have the least background knowledge on the admissions averages.

The experimental group were given the admissions averages for each university and asked which ones they would consider going to, and whether they believed this to be a realistic possibility.

Experimental Group

Control Group

• The control group was given the same survey, excluding the questions providing information regarding the admission requirements.

Expected Results• We expected to see many students who

were told the averages to choose less prestigious universities. We also expected to see more “yes” answers for whether or not it was a realistic possibility from the control group.

• A response is considered positive if they pick a prestigious school as their preferred university and if they believe it is realistic.

• A response is considered negative if they didn’t pick a prestigious school and rather picked Douglas or if they think their choices are unrealistic.

Positive54%

Negative32%

Ambiguous14%

Control Group

Positive Negative Ambiguous

Positive61%

Negative22%

Am-biguous

17%Experimental Group

Positive Negative Ambiguous

Our Results

Our results did not seem very significant. The Control and Experimental groups saw little difference (percentage-wise) when factoring in the ambiguous results.

We decided to see how our groups compared, sans the ambiguous answers.

Positive63%

Negative38%

Control Group

Positive Negative

Positive74%

Negative26%

Experimental Group

Positive Negative

Our Results

Surprisingly, the results we attained were significant, when factoring out ambiguous answers.

Variables

A variable that occurred is that some participants chose not to answer all the questions, which resulted in ambiguous responses. We chose to disregard these answers as they would not fit into the categories of “positive” or “negative” that we sought to analyze.

Students may also have picked their school of choice based on their grades, and this would also be a problem if we had not controlled for it by asking a variety of students from each grade. Not just from an honours class or in the VPA hallway. The students could have a older brother/sister who already informed them about universities, or there could have been students who randomly chose the options as they didn’t know UBC was even a school.

Conclusion

With the difference in percentages of positive answers in the Control Group and Experimental Group, we can safely conclude that there is a correlation within the study to support our hypothesis. With the students knowing the GPA requirements for the universities, there was an additional 11 percent increase in negative responses.  Students who are given statistics regarding admission averages are more likely to be more realistic, and choose schools that fit their capabilities. Whereas students who are not given this information, will make choices influenced by overconfidence.