Perception of the causes of academic achievement among undergraduate students

This study was implemented to identify relations between academic performance (indicated by school grades and the causal attributions of school success and failure in a sample of 167 first graders of a psychology school at a public university. A scale of locus of control adapted to school context, as well as a scale of controllability and stability were administered to students. The factor "perception of academic achievement" (conformed by indicators of controllable, modifiable, adjustable and permanent causes) was specified as affecting academic performance with in a structural equation model. This latent variable explained 21% variance of academic performance in the cases of school failure, while not significantly predicting academic performance in the cases of school success. Thus, school grades are better predicted by perception of school failure than by perception of academic success. The structural model displayed goodness of fit, both statistical and practical.