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Positive and Negative Structures and Processes Underlying Academic Performance: A Chained Mediation Model

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Abstract

This study proposed and tested a comprehensive, chained mediation model of university students’ academic performance. The hypothesized model included adaptive-positive and maladaptive-negative submodels. The structures and processes in the adaptive-positive submodel were hypothesized to facilitate students’ academic performance, whereas the structures and processes in the maladaptive-negative submodel were hypothesized to undermine it. A sample of 373 university students completed a set of questionnaires measuring their approaches to studying, positive and negative affect, evaluation anxiety, use of creative cognition, motivational orientations, and adaptive and maladaptive metacognitions. Participants’ end-of-semester and prior semester academic performance was retrieved from the university registry. A structural equation model explained 90 % of the variance in students’ future academic performance, supported all but one hypothesized intermediate paths, and revealed that only positive affect in studying and prior academic performance predict directly future academic performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are outlined.

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Notes

  1. No hypothesis was posited for the strategic approach to studying because both types of motivation may contribute to it depending on contextual factors that were not assessed in the present study.

  2. The prior academic performance of first year undergraduate students was calculated on either the grades they obtained in their foundation degree (if they took part in this study during the first semester of the first year of their undergraduate degree) or the grades they obtained in the first semester of the first year of their undergraduate degree (if they took part in this study during the second semester of the first year of their undergraduate degree). Postgraduate students’ grades were all gathered in the second semester of their postgraduate degree, and hence the grades from the first semester of their postgraduate degree were used to calculate their prior academic performance.

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  1. University of the Arts, London, UK

    Jekaterina Rogaten

  2. School of Psychology, London Metropolitan University, Room T6-20, Tower Building, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, N7 8DB, UK

    Giovanni B. Moneta

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  1. Jekaterina Rogaten
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Rogaten, J., Moneta, G.B. Positive and Negative Structures and Processes Underlying Academic Performance: A Chained Mediation Model. J Happiness Stud 18, 1095–1119 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-016-9765-6

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