An Investigation into Motivational Interview Training on Cognitive Regulation and Students’ Academic Engagement

Motivational interview is a referential approach and guidance to enhance the internal motivation for change through discovery, identification, solving doubts, and bias. Cognitive regulation of academic excitement and conflict is related to motivation and is one of the problems of students with academic failure that can have negative and irreparable consequences for these students. This study endeavored to investigate the effectiveness of training of motivational interviewing training on cognitive-emotional ordering and academic engagement of students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

This study was a quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test and control group. The population was all students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in the academic year of 2019. Using randomized sampling method, 30 students were selected and randomly assigned to experimental (15 subjects) and control (15 persons) groups. Then, cognitive-emotional ordering questionnaires and educational conflict were used as a pre-test for both groups. Motivational interview training was applied to the experimental group in 6 sessions. At the end of the course, both groups completed the above questionnaires as a post-test. Data were analyzed using covariance analysis.

The descriptive findings of the mean (standard deviation) for the cognitive regulation variable in the pre-test stage of the experimental group were 51.23±5.72, in the post-test was 75.12±5.59 and for the academic engagement in the pretest stage of the experimental group was 75.33±5.89, and the posttest of the experimental group was 96. 46±5. 68 (P =0.002).

Regarding the effectiveness of motivational interview training, it is recommended to use the cognitive emotional order of students to improve their academic status.