“Some highly effective strategies can have a negative impact on enjoyable things” - considerations of university students about motivation regulation strategies

By applying motivational regulation, university students can sustain persistence in study tasks they find boring, irrelevant, or difficult. However, students often do not apply motivation regulation effectively. With a qualitative study, the considerations university students make concerning distinct motivation regulation strategies were investigated, aiming to shed light on the discrepancies between knowledge about and implementation of motivation regulation strategies. Moreover, individual resources and barriers that help or hinder effective motivational regulation were explored. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results indicated that university students make considerations concerning the effectiveness of a strategy and doubts about its effectiveness. Moreover, the situational nature of motivational regulation, associated enjoyment, and costs of putting a strategy into action may matter. Having higher self-regulation skills (especially self-discipline) was the most mentioned individual resource by students. Regarding barriers, procrastination tendencies, and a fixed mindset (especially negativity) seemed to be prominent issues according to students. Overall, students seem to weigh the value of regulating motivation against their other goals and decide whether or not to invest in motivation regulation because they juggle academic responsibilities with multiple other goals.