Evaluation of a Cognitive Behavioural Intervention (ThinkSmart) Aimed at Encouraging Young People to Engage in Higher Education

he persistent patterns of under-representation of certain social groups at higher

education (HE) identified that the current strategies used as part of the widening participation
agenda required revising. Outreach activities are the main strategy used by the widening
participation agenda to address the under-representation of certain groups of young people such
asthose from disadvantaged backgrounds at HE. owever, a shortage of robust evidence made it
difficult to determine the actual mpact and effectiveness of these outreach activities. This thesis
addressed this gap n knowledge by establishing robust approaches to designing and
evaluating outreach activities. To achieve this, a different perspective was taken; this
hesisdemonstrated howpsychology can improve the design and evaluation of outreach
activities.The use of psychological theories such as cognitive behavioural herapy and
attribution theory were demonstrated indevising the outreach ntervention ThinkSmart as
being valuable for outreach activities. The evaluationof ThinkSmart showed a short-term practical
significance, thus the intervention did have an impact on the recipients, this however, was not
sustained. To support the evaluation of ThinkSmart a measure of intention to engage with HE was
devised and validated, 'Students Intentions Towards University' (SITU) due to one not currently
existing in the literature, despite progression to HE being a key outcome for outreach activities.
To understand the effectiveness of ThinkSmart, unique to the thesis a process evaluation was
undertaken to explore the implementation process. The approach showed that the components
required for behavioural change were ignificantly under implemented, which impacted on
the overall success of ThinkSmart explaining to some degree the small short-term gains of
recipients. inally to support the development of well-designed interventions to impact on the
evident disparities in the patterns of participation in HE, as well as providing a ramework for
further research in this area, an ecological model of educational progression was devised.
The model established the importance of the individual in understanding how best to address the
objective of the widening participation; as this an explain why despite their background young
people can achieve. Therefore in summary outreach activities need to consider the individual but in light of the contextual factors presented in the model. This thesis hasdemonstrated that it is important to evaluate outreach activities robustly and to do so principles ofpsychology should be incorporated to improve the design and evaluation of outreach activities, to positively impact on the likelihood of non-traditional students, i.e. those from disadvantaged backgrounds engaging with HE, addressing the widening participation agenda objectives.