Academic Diligence Task (ADT)

The ADT is a direct assessment of students' willingness to focus on tedious academic tasks rather than play games.

Intrapersonal competencies

High school

2014

2014

Student

Digital

There are five tasks in which students are given the choice between working on math problems and playing an online game.

Point-and-click

English

None

No overall score is reported.

There are two subscores:

• Productivity
• Time on task

Students also self-assess boredom following each block.

The scores are calculated automatically.

No information is available in the references reviewed.

Evidence has been collected from high school seniors (N=921) enrolled in two large public high schools in the Northeast United States (Galla et al., 2014).

Reliability was assessed by examining correlations in the three subscores across tasks. Coefficients ranged from 0.41 to 0.66. Internal consistency (alpha) was also estimated by treating tasks as items. Coefficients ranged from 0.84 to 0.89. (Galla et al., 2014).

Evidence based on content

No information is available in the references reviewed.

Evidence based on response processes

There is empirical evidence that productivity declined, on average, over time, as did time-on-task. This response pattern was interpreted as suggesting that a reduction in focused engagement, rather than math ability, was the primary driver in task performance.

Evidence based on internal structure

No information is available in the references reviewed.

Evidence based on relations with other variables

ADT scores correlated positively with Big Five measures of conscientiousness, including self-control and grit, consistent with theory. ADT scores were not associated with Big Five extraversion, openness and emotional stability, also consistent with theory. Productivity was predictive of math and ELA achievement and the odds of on-time high school graduation (Galla et al., 2014).

The ADT is free to use, provided that the source (Galla et al., 2014) is cited.