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A study published online recently in the Journal of Attention Disorders reports encouraging results of an intervention based on teaching college students with ADHD to monitor their academic behavior and goals. As you will see below, this is a relatively simple intervention and one that could be readily implemented by many students.
It is striking that such a relatively simple intervention would lead to the robust effects reported here. Simply by having students identify specific academic behaviors that they were to regularly engage in, and monitor each day whether they had, significant gains were reported in multiple areas where students with ADHD tend to struggle. Providing information and instruction on effective study skills in the absence of teaching this self-monitoring approach, had no comparable effect.
The reason for the positive impact of self-monitoring is not clear. It may be that the simple act of having to decide each day whether one has attained a particular goal, e.g., completed all assigned reading, attended all classes, motivates individuals to attain those goals. Certainly, reviewing a sheet each night where specific goals and behaviors related to academic success are listed provides a regular reminder of what one needs to do. It would also make it more difficult to ‘deceive’ oneself about whether one is acting in ways that are likely to promote successful academic outcomes.
There are, of course, limitations to this study that are important to note. First, students were followed for only about 3–4 weeks — whether they would continue to engage in self-monitoring over a longer period, say an entire semester, is unclear. Even if they did, whether the positive effects would persist is also unknown. Thus, there
is a need for a follow-up study that provided a longer test of this intervention.
It is also the case that all measures collected in this study were self-report measures. Thus, students indicated themselves whether they were meeting their academic goals and these self-reports may not have been entirely accurate. In a subsequent study, it would be helpful to obtain other outcome measures as well, e.g., actual class attendance as reported by instructors, actual GPA for the semester, etc.
While additional research on the use and impact of self-monitoring on the academic success of college students with ADHD needs to be conducted, results of this initial study are encouraging. This is a low-cost, low-risk intervention that students and clinicians could readily implement. It simply requires developing a core set of academic goals/behaviors that the student commits to pursuing each day, developing a simple sheet to track this, and checking each day whether one has completed the behavior.
With programs like google docs, these tracking sheets can be shared between a students, clinicians, and parents. Thus, clinicians or parents could monitor whether the student is regularly completing the form and send email reminders to do so, just as was done in this study. Ideally, of course, students would take responsibility to handling this themselves and doing so would represent an important move towards greater self-regulation for many students.
Category(s):Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Source material from SharpBrains
