The Demotivating Effect (and Unintended Message) of Retrospective Awards

Background/Context: Educators constantly devise new ways to motivate students to perform positive behaviors. Enter most schools and you will find students receiving symbolic awards (e.g., gold stars) for academic and behavioral tasks (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 2001). In fact, the state of California introduced a bill that encourages school administrators to “recognize pupils who achieve excellent attendance or demonstrate significant improvement in attendance (Assembly Bill No.2815, 2016). But, despite the common practice of offering awards to motivate students and an uptick in calls to reduce student absenteeism (ESSA, 2015), little research has been conducted that involves symbolic awards and improved school attendance.

Research Question: Research shows conflicting results of offering awards for attendance

Setting & Intervention: The field experiment targeted 15,329 students in grades 6-12 across 14 U.S. school districts on the West Coast. To be able to randomly assign who would receive a prospective or retrospective award, the sample was restricted to participants who had achieved perfect attendance in at least one fall month (e.g., zero absences in September, October, or November) of that year, which included 88% of the otherwise eligible population.

The researchers tested the impact of sending students symbolic awards for attendance by randomly assigning eligible students to one of three conditions: (1)Control, where students received no additional communications; (2)Prospective Award, where students received a letter telling them that they would have the opportunity to earn an award if they had perfect attendance in February (i.e., the upcoming month); and(3)Retrospective Award, where studentsreceived a letter and a certificate for perfect attendance in a fall month. In both award conditions it was noted that the award would not be offered again that year.

Results: The awards had no positive effect on attendance. Offering students awards retrospectively for the prior positive behavior actually had negative directional effects.