engleski

Attribution of success and depressive symptoms in freshmen academic' achievement expectation

Objectives: The cognitive model assumes that thoughts and beliefs mediate individual's behavioral and emotional reactions. Accordingly, students positive expectations of their academic achievement tend to increase their motivation and efforts put in studying. Several studies found that students' expected success predicted academic achievement and satisfaction which further increased their expectation. On the other side, low expectation leads to task-avoidance, poor academic achievement and dissatisfaction. The main goal of the study was to assess the mediating role of causal attributions in students’ academic achievement expectations, beyond their self-efficacy perception and life orientation. We also wanted to check the contribution of present level of anxiety and depression. Methods: 492 freshmen completed the following measures: Self-efficacy perception, Life Orientation Scale, attributions of academic success (abilities, effort, luck and circumstances), BDI-II, BAI and expected success in college. Results: The results of the hierarchical regression analysis show that internal attributions (abilities and effort) are significant positive predictors of expected success on college, beyond the significant contribution of perceived self-efficacy. The optimistic life orientation, as well as external attributions does not contribute to student expectations. Depressive symptoms, but not anxiety symptoms, (added in the third step in regression analysis) further contribute to lower expectations. Conclusions: The results give implications for cognitive interventions (reattribution training) with college students to increase their expectation of success and their motivation, which is assumed to improve their study efforts and subsequently lead to better achievement. It seems more important to recognize and alleviate depressive than anxiety symptoms in students at the beginning of their academic career because they have more deleterious effect on student expectation and subsequently their achievement. Lower expectation and underachievement, especially in freshmen, may lead to higher depression which further supports the negative feedback loop.

academic success expectation; depression; attribution of success; freshmen

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