Scenario
You are working in a university counselling centre for students, and have been asked by your manager to write an essay that will be included in a bigger publication by your centre. The question to address in your essay is:
Based on the evidence summarised in a review of self-control strategies by Duckworth and colleagues, what is one recommendation that you can give to students and one recommendation that you can give to university teachers or managers, about strategies for improving student self-control in relation to study or wellbeing in life as a university student?
Please note that you cannot write about either of the two strategies discussed in the sample
assignment: planning and changing microenvironments.
Your task
Your task is to submit a text document (Word or pdf), in which you write an essay addressing the question above. Your essay should discuss two self-control strategies or interventions reviewed by Duckworth et al. (2018): one self-deployed and one other-deployed. As you present your argument for why your chosen interventions are particularly suitable, you will
need to:
Define the strategy: what does it involve doing and how or why might it help improve self-control, generally?
Describe how the strategy could be feasibly implemented in relation to student life.
Comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the research evidence base for the strategy (drawing on evidence presented by Duckworth et al., 2018).
Note that the focus here is on strengths and weaknesses of any research evidence used to support the effectiveness of the strategy, rather than simply the possible benefits/pitfalls of the strategy itself. You will need to summarise some particular studies cited by Duckworth et al. and discuss, for instance: are there any design flaws or generalisability issues?
