Previous research has explored the role of growth mindset and parental socialization as drivers of undergraduate success. We propose that students' perceptions of their caregivers' growth mindset beliefs might be associated with their academic engagement. This study examined how undergraduates' own mindsets and perceptions of their caregivers' mindsets relate to four components of academic engagement. Survey data from American undergraduate students (N = 1,417) were analyzed using structural equation modeling. On average, students possessed a growth mindset and perceived their caregivers as holding a growth mindset. Student growth mindset was positively associated with behavioral and emotional engagement and negatively associated with behavioral and emotional disaffection. Perceptions of caregiver growth mindset were associated with lower behavioral disaffection. Student growth mindset moderated the association between perceived caregiver mindset and emotional engagement. Findings highlight the association between motivational beliefs and academic behaviors through the lens of students' experiences and perceptions of others.
Text data are increasingly accessible yet analytic approaches often rely on a single method that may obscure information or nuance. We introduce a complementary set of text methods to address this limitation using puberty as an example. Youth (N = 183, Mage=11.73 years, SDage=.88) wrote open-ended narratives about puberty experiences and we compared these to a matching set of ChatGPT generated responses to demonstrate source comparison. We applied sentiment analysis, frequency analysis, and pointwise mutual information to examine how puberty was represented across sources. Results across methods highlighted that overall sentiment masked negativity tied to socially evaluated or stigmatized changes and that sources differed in emphasizing or omitting changes. ChatGPT systematically underrepresented physical realities of puberty compared to youth, especially regarding menstruation. Findings underscore that no one method provided a complete account of puberty. Integrating complementary text methods can better support complex developmental questions and interpretations of developmental experiences.
