A Randomized Control Trial to Evaluate the Use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to Increase Academic Performance and Psychological Flexibility in Graduate Students
Open accessAbstract
Graduate students experience high levels of demand in their degree programs, which often results in difficulty maintaining their academic performance and managing their distress. The present study examined the effectiveness of a 6-week values clarification and committed action training program derived from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to increase academic performance and psychological flexibility of graduate students in a behavior analysis and therapy program by comparing a Values intervention group to a Study Tips active treatment control group on measures of academic performance, psychological flexibility, values-driven behavior, and stress. The results suggest that the Values group demonstrated statistically significant improvements in academic performance (t (32) = 1.902, p < 0.05), psychological flexibility (t (32) = 1.895, p < .05), and ratings of the importance of education-related values (t (32) = 2.013, p < .05) compared to the control group, and nonsignificant improvements in reports of consistency with education-related values (t (32) = 0.7204, p > .05) and perceived stress (t (32) = 1.521, p > .05). The Values group also demonstrated a higher score for social validity than the control group following the intervention (t (32) = 2.449, p < .05).
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Research on ACT in higher education has focused on other outcome variables such as academic performance, psychological flexibility, and time management skills.
“Research on the use of ACT in higher education has focused on other outcome variables; for example, academic performance, psychological flexibility, and time management skills are all outcomes that have been measured in recent research (e.g., Paliliunas et al., 2018; Katajavuori et al., 2021).”
From A Scoping Review of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Higher Education (2024) · cites this paper as Paliliunas et al., 2018
The Discussion reports that the ACT treatment group showed greater psychological flexibility and better academic outcomes. The paper discusses time spent on activities, but our copy does not show time management skills being measured as an outcome. The sentence cites another study alongside Paliliunas et al., but it does not assign the outcomes to the citations separately. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Paliliunas, D., Belisle, J., & Dixon, M. R.
- Affiliations
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale (US)
- Corresponding author
- Dixon, Mark R.
- Venue
- Behavior Analysis in Practice
- Published
- 2018-05-07
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 241-253
- ISSN
- 1998-1929 (ISSN-L)
- 2196-8934
- PMC
- PMC6182845
- OpenAlex
- W2799801566
- Cited by
- 43
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 5.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Behavior Analysis in Practice (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Student Stress and Coping
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Perfectionism, Procrastination, Anxiety Studies
- Keywords
- acceptance and commitment therapy, graduate students, academic performance, psychological flexibility, values clarification, perceived stress, social validity, values-based intervention
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