Feedback
Feedback (knowledge of results) is an important part of the goal-setting process, as it allows you to assess, review, and adapt your strategies where necessary. Without feedback you are blind to whether your strategies are working or not.
Feedback can have a beneficial impact on your psyche and future performance whether the feedback is positive or negative. For example, receiving positive feedback (i.e., that you are on track to reach your goals) will enhance your confidence, pride, and motivation which can drive you towards future success. Who doesn't like to receive a bit of positive feedback? We all love the warm fuzzy feeling when we know we have done something well.
If you learn that you are falling short of your goals (negative feedback), this can also motivate you. It can give you a 'kick up the backside' to work harder as you attempt to reduce the gap between your current and desired level of performance (unless the gap is so large that you believe you have little chance to obtain the goal at all, which demotivates you).
Locke and Latham (1990) found 17 of 18 studies showed that feedback with goal setting improved the performance outcome compared to goal setting without feedback. Mento, Steel, and Karren's (1987) meta-analysis of goal setting research that was completed between 1966 and 1984, came to the conclusion that combining specific difficult goals with feedback improved performance by a whopping 17.46%!
A more recent study conducted by Baghurst, Bradford, and Mulekar (2012) looked at the effect of feedback on performance (number of sit-ups) on 122 participants. They completed 10 sit-up sessions over 5 weeks, including 3 initial familiarisation sessions, followed by a further 7 sessions which was used for the test data.
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No Feedback Group - Participants were asked to complete as many push ups as they could. However, while doing the sit-ups, they had to answer multiplication questions. The purpose of this was to distract the participants from counting how many sit-ups they had completed. At the end of the session, the participants were not given any feedback on how many sit ups they had completed.
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Feedback Group - Participants were asked to complete as many push ups as they could. The participants were given their score after every session, and at the start of each new session had the goal of improving their previous score (e.g. by 3 sit-ups). This group were not distracted from counting, i.e. they did not have to answer muliplication questions.
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Control Group - Participants were asked to do their best at the beginning of each session, but did not have any goal. This group were not distracted from counting, i.e. they did not have to answer muliplication questions.
The results showed that the feedback group showed the most improvement in their number of push-ups recorded across the 7 test trials. However, the no feedback group showed little improvement, and their performances were inconsistent across the trials. The control group performed the worst of all.
MODULE GOAL SETTING
Goal setting guidelines
References
Baghurst, T., Bradford, S., & Mulekar, M. (2012). The effect of feedback on goal setting and performance in a pushup task. Texas AHPERD Journal. 80. 8-13.
Locke, E.A., & Latham, G.P. (1990). A theory of goal setting and task performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Mento, A.J., Steel, R.P., & Karren, R.J. (1987). A meta-analytic study of the effects of goal setting on task performance: 1966 - 1984, Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 39, 52-83.