Effect of goals and sub goals on problem solving performance

This studv investigated wlietlier or not the use of breaking aown a prolilem into smalter components (goals and sub goals) aided in the amount of time taken and accuracy achieved in physics and logic problems. The variables being manipulated in this study were; type of goal (no goal, goal, goal with sub goals), type of test (physics and logic), and sex-( male and female). The overa!I hypothesis is that the goals with sub goals condition will result in increased speed of completion (in minutes) and increased accuracy (numfler or correct answers) of the objective physics and word-logic problems. We expected that sub goals with goals condition would have better results than goals alone or no goals conditions. 70 college students emolled in University of the Pacific\u27s physics courses participated in this study. The design was a 2x3x2 factorial. The inferential analytic procedure used was the between groups, factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results show that for logic tests, participants in the goals and sub goals condition had a significantly faster rate of completion and higher accuracy. For physics tests, results showed that goals and sub goals had no effect on time or accuracy