Research suggests a link between students’ social background, e.g. educational background of parents, academic self-efficacy expectations and study behaviour. Often, lower academic achievement is expected of those students’ whose parents are characterized by lower educational background. Although digital media are prevalent in several areas of everyday life, their relevance for academic achievement is not satisfactorily explored. Furthermore, it remains largely unknown in this context whether media usage is related to social background factors. In consequence, it is important to investigate if existing inequalities in higher education are stable, further enhanced or even reduced by means of “digitalisation”. The present study explores the relationships between individual, contextual as well as social background factors, with a special focus on academic and digital media self-efficacy expectations. Data was collected at four German universities in summer 2018 (n = 2039). Currently, data is analysed by means of structural equation models

Brahm, Taiga

Pumptow, Marina

English

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www.ssoar.infoThe Relevance of Students' Digital Media Behaviourand Self-Efficacy for Academic Achievement inView of their Socio-Economic BackgroundPumptow, Marina; Brahm, TaigaErstveröffentlichung / Primary PublicationKonferenzbeitrag / conference paperEmpfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation:Pumptow, M., & Brahm, T. (2019). The Relevance of Students' Digital Media Behaviour and Self-Efficacy for AcademicAchievement in View of their Socio-Economic Background. In Proceedings of the Weizenbaum Conference 2019"Challenges of Digital Inequality - Digital Education, Digital Work, Digital Life" (pp. 1-5). Berlin https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.cp/2.3Nutzungsbedingungen:Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY Lizenz (Namensnennung) zurVerfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen findenSie hier:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.deTerms of use:This document is made available under a CC BY Licence(Attribution). For more Information see:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0DOI: 10.34669/wi.cp/2.3 PROCEEDINGS OF THE WEIZENBAUM CONFERENCE 2019 CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL INEQUALITY DIGITAL EDUCATION | DIGITAL WORK | DIGITAL LIFE THE RELEVANCE OF STUDENTS’ DIGITAL MEDIA BEHAVIOUR AND SELF-EFFICACY FOR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN VIEW OF THEIR SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND Marina Pumptow Eberhard Karls University Tübingen Chair of Economic Education Tübingen, Germany marina.pumptow@uni-tuebingen.de Taiga Brahm  Eberhard Karls University Tübingen Chair of Economic Education Tübingen, Germany taiga.brahm@uni-tuebingen.de ABSTRACT Research suggests a link between students’ social background, e.g. educational background of par-ents, academic self-efficacy expectations and study behaviour. Often, lower academic achievement is expected of those students’ whose parents are characterized by lower educational background. Although digital media are prevalent in several areas of everyday life, their relevance for academic achievement is not satisfactorily explored. Furthermore, it remains largely unknown in this context whether media usage is related to social background factors. In consequence, it is important to inves-tigate if existing inequalities in higher education are stable, further enhanced or even reduced by means of “digitalisation”. The present study explores the relationships between individual, contextual as well as social background factors, with a special focus on academic and digital media self-efficacy expectations. Data was collected at four German universities in summer 2018 (n = 2039). Currently, data is analysed by means of structural equation models. KEYWORDS Socio-economic background; digital media self-efficacy; digital media in higher education1 INTRODUCTION Although digital media are prevalent in several areas of everyday life, their role in academic set-tings and their relevance for academic achieve-ment are not satisfactorily explored. Research concerning academic attainment is often fo-cused on the link between students’ self-efficacy expectations and motivation (e. g. Komarraju & Dial, 2014; Pajares & Schunk, 2001; Putwain, Sander, & Larkin, 2013; Zimmerman, 2000), stating that self-efficacy expectations are an im-portant predictor for academic goal setting and achievement.  Based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) (e. g. 1977, 2012), self-efficacy beliefs are expectations regarding one’s capabilities to successfully master individual or study-related tasks and situations. The higher the self-efficacy belief, the higher the effort people will put into an activity, the longer they will preserve when confronted with obstacles (Pajares, 1996, p. 544). Thus, the SCT and self-efficacy expec-tations may be used as a theoretical framework to analyse thoughts, motivation and behaviour in academic contexts and, therefore, appear to be well suited to the aim of the study at hand.In addition to the self-efficacy-achievement-re-lation, academic achievement varies between different social groups, such as migrants, stu-dents with children or low socio-economic sta-tus (SES) (Röwert, Lah, Dahms, Berthold, & Stuckrad, 2017). In this regard, research sug-gests that students’ SES may affect academic achievement via self-efficacy (Weiser & Riggio, 2010). Surprisingly, whether media usage resp. certain types of media usage are relevant for ac-ademic achievement and their relation to social background factors remains largely unknown in this context.Previous work on digital media at universities is predominantly based on empirical studies that describe different types of media usage patterns. These studies show that students with different characteristics (e.g. age, family status or ambi-tions) show differing patterns of digital media use in academic settings (Grosch, 2012; Zawacki-Richter, 2015; Zawacki-Richter, Dolch, & Müskens, 2017). However, the impact of digital media on studying itself as well as fac-tors such as underlying motivations, emotions, self-evaluations, self-efficacy or students’ social background are hardly considered in these stud-ies. In consequence, it is unknown if existing in-equalities in higher education are stable, further enhanced or even reduced by means of “digital-isation”.  As academic self-efficacy expectations are deemed relevant for academic behaviour and achievement and certain types of digital media usage are supposedly relevant in terms of suc-cessful studying as well, self-efficacy expecta-tions regarding digital media use (DMSE) should also be taken into account.  Apart from that, in other research on academic achievement, evidence for the association with the following constructs were often found: gen-der; previous academic performance (Talsma, Schüz, Schwarzer, & Norris, 2018); motivation and goal orientation (Hsieh, Sullivan, & Guerra, 2007) because of its relevance for interest and self-regulation and its dependence on self-effi-cacy (Honicke & Broadbent, 2016); emotions like anxiety (Hsieh, Sullivan, Sass, & Guerra, 2012); perceived control over actions and out-comes (Pekrun, 2006) and certain personality traits like conscientiousness due to its link to self-discipline (Lievens, Ones, & Dilchert, 2009).  A sketch of the assumed relationships is shown in Figure 1. Next to these often found connec-tions, we aim to explore the relevance of digital media and of the associated self-efficacy expec-tations for academic achievement (highlighted), in order to fill this research gap and to supple-ment current research on learning in higher edu-cation institutions. Figure 1:  Path diagram of theoretically assumed relationship of constructs.2 DATA & METHODS In order to analyse the above mentioned rela-tionships, data was collected by using a recently developed survey instrument that allows ad-dressing the multi-faceted character of academic studies and digital media behaviour (Pumptow & Brahm, under review). The scales of the questionnaire are based on ap-proved scales taken from instruments in current research in the subject area (Brahm & Jenert, 2015; Grosch & Gidion, 2011; Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 2002; Lang & Hillmert, 2014; Leichsenring, 2011; Zawacki-Richter, 2015). Additionally, based on the general self-efficacy scale by Schwarzer and Jerusalem (2010), a scale for self-efficacy in terms of digital media was newly constructed to capture students’ me-dia-related self-efficacy. Data collection took place at four German universities from May to July 2018. In total, 3342 students participated in the online-survey of which 2039 cases remain after excluding cases due to missing data. Cur-rently, data is analysed in terms of the above mentioned relationships by means of structural equation models. 3 RESULTS Initial multiple regression analyses indicate that the expected relationships between the above mentioned constructs (see Figure 1) can be con-firmed with our empirical data. Results of the in depth-analyses will be presented at the confer-ence. 4 CONCLUSION The results will show first insights into the rele-vance of certain types of digital media behaviour for academic success in higher education. Fur-thermore, it is shown how digital media self-ef-ficacy is linked to this observable media behav-iour and to students’ social backgrounds. In this regard, our research contributes to the important question of the relation between students' digital media use, their social background and their study success. 5 REFERENCES 1. Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: toward a uni-fying theory of behavioral change. Psychologi-cal Review, 84, 191–215.2. Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations ofThought and Action. A Social Cognitive The-ory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.3. Bandura, A. (1995). Exercise of personal andcollective efficacy in changing societies. In A.Bandura (Ed.), Self-efficacy in changing socie-ties. New York et al.: Cambridge UniversityPress.4. Bandura, A. (2012). Social cognitive theory.Handbook of Social Psychological Theories,2012, 349–373.5. Brahm, T., & Jenert, T. (2015). On the assess-ment of attitudes towards studying – Develop-ment and validation of a questionnaire. 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The Relevance of Students' Digital Media Behaviour and Self-Efficacy for Academic Achievement in View of their Socio-Economic Background

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The Relevance of Students' Digital Media Behaviour and Self-Efficacy for Academic Achievement in View of their Socio-Economic Background

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