Core Goals and Their Relationship to Semester Subgoals and Academic Performance

This study was designed to examine the nature of core goals and to investigate how core goals are related to semester subgoals, time spent on subgoals, and academic performance. The study provides evidence for a set of core goals that tend to become the central focus of behavior. The importance of these goals was demonstrated by participants who set and accomplished more core semester subgoals than secondary semester subgoals and who spent more time on those goals. In addition, participants who spent more time on their core subgoals and accomplished more core subgoals tended to perform better academically. Thus results indicate that courses designed to increase student retention rates such as University 101 or learning and study strategies courses may profit from activities designed to help students think about their goals and to examine the alignment of their most important goals with their subgoals and how they spend their time.