Application of sentence-level text analysis: The role of emotion in an experimental learning intervention

Abstract

This registered study aimed at testing the role of emotion in the intervention effect of an experimental intervention study in academic settings. Previous analyses of the National Study of the Learning Mindset (Yeager et al., 2019) showed that in a randomized controlled trial, high school students who were given the growth mindset intervention had, on average higher GPA than did students in the control condition. Previous analyses also showed that school achievement levels moderated the intervention effect. This study applied a sentence-level text analysis strategy to detect participants' attentional focus in five emotional dimensions (valence, arousal, dominance/control, approach-avoidant, and uncertainty) across three writing prompts students wrote during the intervention. Linear mixed models were conducted to test if emotional dimension scores computed using the text analysis predicted a higher intervention effect (i.e., higher post-intervention GPA given pre-intervention GPA). The moderating role of school achievement levels was also examined. The results of this study have implications on the possibility of applying text analysis strategies on open-ended questions in interventions or experimental studies to examine the role of the emotion-attentional focus of participants during intervention or experimental studies on the intervention or experimental outcomes, especially those that are conducted in academic settings.