Browsing by Author "Limeri, Lisa B. (TTU)"

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Development of the Mentoring in Undergraduate Research Survey
(2024) Limeri, Lisa B. (TTU); Carter, Nathan T.; Hess, Riley A.; Tuma, Trevor T.; Koscik, Isabelle; Morrison, Alexander J.; Outlaw, Briana; Royston, Kathren Sage; Bridges, Benjamin H.T.; Dolan, Erin L.
Here we present the development of the Mentoring in Undergraduate Research Survey (MURS) as a measure of a range of mentoring experienced by undergraduate science re-searchers. We drafted items based on qualitative research and refined the items through cognitive interviews and expert sorting. We used one national dataset to evaluate the internal structure of the measure and a second national dataset to examine how responses on the MURS related to theoretically relevant constructs and student characteristics. Our factor analytic results indicate seven lower order forms of mentoring experiences: abusive supervision, accessibility, technical support, psychosocial support, interpersonal mis-match, sexual harassment, and unfair treatment. These forms of mentoring mapped onto two higher-order factors: supportive and destructive mentoring experiences. Although most undergraduates reported experiencing supportive mentoring, some reported experiencing absence of supportive as well as destructive experiences. Undergraduates who experienced less supportive and more destructive mentoring also experienced lower scientific integration and a dampening of their beliefs about the value of research. The MURS should be useful for investigating the effects of mentoring experienced by undergraduate researchers and for testing interventions aimed at fostering supportive experiences and reducing or preventing destructive experiences and their impacts.
Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities: Mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs uniquely predict undergraduate educational outcomes
(2023) Limeri, Lisa B. (TTU); Carter, Nathan T.; Lyra, Franchesca; Martin, Joel; Mastronardo, Halle; Patel, Jay; Dolan, Erin L.
Students’ beliefs about their abilities (called “lay theories”) affect their motivations, be-haviors, and academic success. Lay theories include beliefs about the potential to improve intelligence (mindset), who (i.e., everyone or only some people) has the potential to be excellent in a field (universality), and whether reaching excellence in a field requires raw intellectual talent (brilliance). Research demonstrates that each of these beliefs influences students’ educational experiences and academic outcomes. However, it re-mains unclear whether they represent distinct latent constructs or are susceptible to the “jangle fallacy” (i.e., different names given to the same underlying construct). We conducted a multiphase, mixed-methods study to 1) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs represent conceptually and empirically discriminable concepts, and 2) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs contribute unique ex-planatory value for both psychosocial (e.g., sense of belonging) and academic outcomes (e.g., course grades). To address these questions, we developed and collected validity evidence for a new measure of science and math undergraduates’ lay theories, called the Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities (ULTrA) survey. Factor analyses suggest that mindset, brilliance, and universality are distinct and empirically discriminable constructs. Structural Equation Models indicate that each lay theory contributes unique predictive value to relevant outcomes.
Undergraduates’ reactions to errors mediates the association between growth mindset and study strategies
(2024) Chouvalova, Anastasia (TTU); Navlekar, Anisha S. (TTU); Mills, Devin J. (TTU); Adams, Mikayla (TTU); Daye, Sami (TTU); De Anda, Fatima (TTU); Limeri, Lisa B. (TTU)
Background: Students employ a variety of study strategies to learn and master content in their courses. Strategies vary widely in their effectiveness for promoting deep, long-term learning, yet most students use ineffective strategies frequently. Efforts to educate students about effective study strategies have revealed that knowledge about effective strategies is by itself insufficient for encouraging widespread and lasting changes. An important next step is to uncover factors that influence the decisions students make about study strategy use. We explored the association between beliefs about intelligence (mindset, universality, and brilliance) and study strategies. The most effective study strategies are error-prone, and beliefs about intelligence carry implications for whether errors are a normal and even beneficial part of the learning process (e.g., growth mindset) or signs of insufficient intelligence (e.g., fixed mindset). Therefore, we hypothesized that beliefs about and reactions to errors would mediate a relationship between beliefs about intelligence and study strategies. We tested this hypothesis by surveying 345 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory biology class at a public, research-active university in northwestern United States. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the internal structure of all measures functioned as expected in our sample. We fit a structural equation model to evaluate our hypothesized model. We found that mindset, but not universality nor brilliance, predicts variance in both beliefs about errors and reactions to errors. In turn, adaptive reactions to errors (but not beliefs about errors) are associated with the use of highly effective study strategies and spacing study sessions. There was a significant indirect relationship between growth mindset and spacing of study sessions. Conclusions: Our results provide evidence for a mechanism explaining the association between students’ mindset beliefs and academic outcomes: believing that intelligence is improvable is associated with more adaptive reactions to making errors, which correlates with choosing more error-prone and therefore more effective study strategies. Future interventions aimed at improving students’ study strategies may be more effective if they simultaneously target reacting adaptively to errors and emphasize that intelligence is improvable.