| The theory of perceived control (Skinner, 1995) evolved from motivation theories including competence (White, 1959) and attribution theory (Weiner, 1979) and focuses on individuals' beliefs that their behavior can control outcomes. Motivation and personal control have long been linked to academic success in a variety of settings. Due to the burgeoning use of online undergraduate psychology participant pools, in the current study I investigated how perceived control is related to when in the semester students chose to participate in research offered for course credit, and how many of the total research credits they completed. In four hundred sixty-five introductory undergraduate college students, perception of control predicted the day in the semester that students completed their first research study. The day in the semester of completion of the first research study then predicted the total number of research credits completed by the end of the semester. |
