Shared Goal Tracking and Study Habits

ISEF Category: Behavioral and Social Sciences

Subcategory: Social Psychology  ·  Difficulty: Intermediate  ·  Setup: Home Setup  ·  Time: 1 to 2 Months

The Hook

A shared spreadsheet can change behavior more than a private promise. That matters because teens often study in bursts, and tiny habit shifts can add up fast. This project lets you test whether public commitment beats private goal-setting for study routines.

What Is It?

Public commitment means other people can see your goal. Private goal-setting keeps the same goal hidden. Think of it like leaving your gym plan on a whiteboard in the room versus saving it in a notes app only you can open. Social psychology asks whether the visible version changes behavior because people want to stay consistent with what they said out loud.

Your project compares those two setups over 3 weeks. One group posts goals in a shared spreadsheet, and the other keeps goals private. You can measure behavior two ways. Self-report means students log what they think they did. Screen-time API data means a device or app gives you an automatic record of phone use during study blocks.

Why This Is a Good Topic

This topic is testable because you can compare two clear conditions and track behavior over time. It connects to a real problem, many students want better study habits but also spend a lot of time on their phones. You can learn how to design a fair comparison, measure behavior two ways, and check whether a social nudge changes what people actually do.

Research Questions

• How does public commitment in a shared spreadsheet affect self-reported daily study time compared with private goal-setting?
• What is the effect of public commitment on screen-time minutes during planned study blocks?
• Does the size of the accountability group change the difference between public and private goal-setting?
• To what extent does public commitment change task completion rates across 3 weeks?
• Which outcome, self-report or screen-time API data, shows a stronger change after public commitment?
• How does the first week compare with the third week for students using shared accountability?

Basic Materials

• Google Sheets or Excel with shared access for participant goals.
• Smartphone or tablet with built-in screen-time tracking.
• Weekly self-report form in Google Forms or Microsoft Forms.
• Study-log template for daily check-ins.
• Computer for data entry and graphing.

Advanced Materials

• Qualtrics account with anonymous response links.
• Secure lab computers for encrypted data storage.
• R or Python for statistical analysis.
• Device log exports from phones or tablets.
• Institutional review board approved consent forms and assent forms.

Software & Tools

• Google Forms: Collects weekly self-reports and keeps responses organized.
• Google Sheets: Stores group assignments, study goals, and summary measures.
• R: Compares group changes and makes simple plots of the results.
• Python: Cleans screen-time exports and merges them with survey data.
• jamovi: Runs basic statistical tests without coding.

Experiment Steps

1. Define the one behavior you will treat as your main outcome, such as study time, phone time during study blocks, or both.
2. Decide how you will separate public commitment from private goal-setting so the only major difference is who can see the goal.
3. Set your baseline measures, then plan how you will compare week one with the later weeks.
4. Build a matching system for self-reports and screen-time exports so each participant's data lines up.
5. Choose the control variables you will record, such as grade level, course load, and starting study habits.
6. Plan the analysis you will use to compare group change over time and check whether the two measures agree.

Common Pitfalls

• Letting students post goals at different times, which makes the public condition weaker for late starters.
• Using screen-time totals from the whole day instead of the study window, which hides the effect you want to measure.
• Counting homework, tutoring, and club work as the same thing, which blurs the meaning of study habits.
• Comparing students who already study a lot with students who are starting from scratch, which can mask the treatment effect.
• Trusting self-reports without a device record, which can miss gaps between memory and actual phone use.

What Makes This Competitive

A competitive version of this project does more than compare averages. You would pair self-report with device data, test whether the effect changes across the 3 weeks, and control for baseline phone use and workload. You could also compare whether public commitment helps low-procrastination and high-procrastination students differently, which adds a stronger social psychology angle.

Project Variations

• Test whether public commitment works better for homework completion than for study time.
• Compare a shared spreadsheet with a shared text chat or a private goal journal.
• Measure whether students with higher baseline phone use change more after public commitment.

Learn More

• APA Dictionary of Psychology: Search for self-monitoring, commitment, and social influence terms.
• PubMed: Search for review articles on accountability, goal setting, and behavior change.
• National Library of Medicine Bookshelf: Find free psychology and research methods texts.
• NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research: Read plain-language guides to behavioral research.
• MIT OpenCourseWare: Look for social psychology and research methods lecture notes.