Sewanee Professor Leads Study of Laws of Life Contest

Sewanee Professor Leads Study of Laws of Life Contest

by Marisa Wilson, Messenger Intern

In the Fall of 2012, the University of the South was awarded a grant of $1.1 million from the John Templeton Foundation to support psychology professor Sherry Hamby’s research on the Laws of Life Contest in Franklin County.

The Laws of Life Contest was created in 1987 by the Templeton Foundation to promote moral character development in middle and high school students through the writing of essays on concepts such as the Golden Rule and “honesty is the best policy.” The contest originated in Franklin County, where Templeton was born and raised, so the foundation selected this area for further research. 

Hamby’s project will be the first systematic evaluation of the contest by studying how participating in the writing contest has affected the growth and development of character in past contestants.

The data for the study will be collected from people in Franklin County and the bordering counties; Hamby hopes to have 3,000 completed surveys and 200 open-ended, qualitative interviews, making the study one of the largest research projects conducted in rural Appalachia. The surveys will cover personal strengths such as generosity, interpersonal skills, and conduct in the face of adversity, and the interviews will explore these strengths further by allowing interviewees to discuss topics not covered in the survey. As a thank-you for their help, those who complete surveys and interviews are given Walmart gift cards.

The 36-month long project began in April. Hamby and eight staff members (seven are current or past Sewanee students) have collected 800 surveys from both contest participants and those who did not submit essays to the Laws of Life Contest (as a comparison group). These surveys have been completed by people who would have been in middle or high school when the contest began more than 25 years ago through last year’s essay writers; those surveyed range in age from 12 to 48. Hamby said that the wide age range makes this study unique in that both adolescents and adults will be included in the same data pool.

“A lot of time people look at either kids or adults, and this [study] will allow us to really see what developmental patterns occur across [ages] 17, 18 and 19,” said Hamby.

On preliminary results, Hamby comments, “People who really poured themselves into that essay, and really spent a lot of time working on it, and really shared something they felt was important about themselves in it are showing quite a bit higher scores on a lot of different measures of character development.”

Another interesting point Hamby has seen so far is the importance of employment as an area where one exhibits strengths and may experience adversity, and she hopes to explore that further as the study continues.

One of the groups surveyed by Hamby decided to donate the Walmart gift cards they were given in exchange for their participation in the research to a woman who had lost her house in a fire.

“[This] is a perfect example of generosity which is one of the strengths that we are studying in the project,” said Hamby. “It was neat that not only are we studying it, but we are also providing an opportunity for people to be generous through their research participation.”

Hamby’s final results will be published in a series of journal articles, and she will present the project at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention next month. The results of the study will also be published in a booklet aimed at the general public.