Browsing by Subject "goals"

Desires are an integral part of everyday life. Many desires can be enacted without problems, but some desires are in conflict with other goals. Success in managing one’s problematic desires is influenced by many factors. This review aims to describe the role of trait self-control in managing daily desires and in achieving long-term goals. Traditionally, self-control research has assumed that trait self-control operates by resisting temptations. However, recent work has shown that avoiding temptations rather than resisting them and adaptive habits can act as moderators between trait self-control and goal attainment. An important question for future research is how trait self-control contributes to the formation and maintenance of adaptive habits. Future studies should compare different self-control strategies and measure people’s actual behavior in real-life situations. Experience sampling is a useful method for gathering empirical data on how people behave, think and feel in their natural environment.

Motivation has an important role in academic learning for learning is regulated by motivation. Further motivation is centrally manifested by goals. Goals reflect values and regulate individual's orientation and what they strive for. In spite of the central role of motivation in academic learning, discussions on post-graduate education has somewhat overlooked motivational processes and concentrated on the excellence of performance. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of goals PhD students have and how they experience their role in their own scientific community. It was also purpose to study how these goals and experienced roles are in relation with study each other, context, possible intentions of quitting studies and prolongation of studies. Furthermore, the aim was to investigate how different postgraduates differ in terms of how they experience their learning environment. The data was collected with the "From PhD students to academic experts" - survey (Pyhältö & Lonka, 2006) from four complementary domains: medicine, arts, psychology and education. The survey consisted of both likert-scaled items and open ended questions. The participants were 601 postgraduate students. The goals and the experienced role in scientific community were analysed in terms of qualitative content analysis. The relation between goals and experienced role and background variables were tested using χ² and the differences between different postgraduate groups using one way analysis of variances (ANOVA). The results indicated that postgraduates goals varied based on whether they brought up goals related to the product (outcome of the thesis process), the process (thesis process as whole) or both the product and the process. Product goals consisted of for example career qualification and better status as process goals consisted for example of learning and influencing ones own discipline. The experienced role of the postgraduates differed in terms of whether the conception was organised, unorganised or controversial. Both the goals and the experienced roles were in relation with study context and commitment to the studies. The different postgraduate groups also differed in terms of how they experienced their own learning environment.