Assigned versus participative goal setting with educated and uneducated woods workers

Abstract

Conducted a field experiment of (a) 24 educationally disadvantaged woods worker crews and (b) 24 educated logging crews to compare assigned goal setting, participative goal setting, and a "do your best" condition. The experiment was conducted separately for each sample. Results show that for the uneducated Ss, the participative condition had higher productivity than the assigned and "do your best" conditions. In addition, goal difficulty and goal attainment were significantly higher in the participative condition than in the assigned condition. No significant differences among conditions were found for the educated Ss, although this may have been due to problems in implementation of the goal-setting program with this sample. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)