Author

Sonja Swanson

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Barton, Michelle

Area of Concentration

Psychology with Rhetoric and Writing

Abstract

College students are a focus of many studies on well-being and academic performance. This is because they must navigate a newfound independence juggling many responsibilities while consistently submitting assignments for their classes. Most often these assignments involve writing, a notable struggle for those new to taking care of their mental health. The current study conducted a self-affirmation intervention to investigate the effects on college student eudaimonic well-being, hedonic well-being, and writing self-efficacy. Sixteen students participated in a three-week intervention involving two surveys and three writing tasks. The selfaffirmation group completed values-affirmation writing tasks and the control group completed a writing task about their week. The study utilized descriptive statistics to discover the relationship between the writing tasks and the dependent variables. The results showed no substantial differences between the control group and experimental group between pretest and posttest analysis. The study suggests that future research on writing self-efficacy might have the potential to be affected by a self-affirmation intervention given a longer intervention period.

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