The relationship of psychosocial factors and academic success

Abstract

Background: Predicting who will succeed in an academic and career setting is of critical importance during an era of high unemployment rates, spiraling cost in education, and a changing economy. Previous research related to students who succeed has focused primarily on academic cognitive factors. However, this study aims to illuminate the impact of psychosocial factors on predicting academic success. Methods: This project consisted of 595 college students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Each student was given a research packet to fill out that evaluated their work personality, academic engagement, and social support, specifically the effects of the constructs on academic outcomes. The study analyzed the variables in regards to their relationship, incremental effect, and moderation on academic success. Results: Key findings illustrated that: (1) all three of the operational definitions of academic success were all positively related to the study variables of work personality, engagement, and social support, (2) the study variables accounted for the strongest variance (19%) of the effort alone model, which, was the most variance accounted for in all three hierarchical regressions for the second research aim of the study, (3) in regards to gender, females scored higher on all three models of academic success compared to males, (4) in regards to race, whites scored higher on two of the models of academic success (i.e., grade point average alone and the composites score of effort & grade point average), compared to non-whites, although whites did not score higher than the non-whites on the self-reported effort model of academic success, and (5) gender had moderator effects for the subscales of the Revised Developmental Work Personality Scale, the Ultrecht Work Engagement Scale, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support for predicting academic success, (6) work personality and social support was more salient for females for predicting academic success, and (7) engagement was more relevant for males for predicting academic success. Conclusion: This dissertation illustrated that the psychosocial factors of work personality, academic engagement, and social support play a role in the academic outcomes of college students and could be used as the infrastructure for follow-up studies with different populations of college students. Through continuing research, it is hoped that the findings from this study will become useful for the vocational rehabilitation field and university administrators for designing academic and career transitional interventions