Abstract
Previous research has established that a relationship exists between the personality trait of conscientiousness and academic achievement. The current study extends prior research by using a path analysis model to explore various proximal traits that may mediate this relationship in a sample of two hundred and twenty three undergraduate university students. Consistent with previous research, a strong positive relationship was found between conscientiousness and academic performance as measured by final grades. Of greater importance, two factors were found to mediate this relationship: Academic Self-Efficacy and Test Anxiety. The current study illustrates the complex nature of the relation between personality traits and academic achievement and indicates that personality likely has a distal effect on academic performance through more proximal characteristics.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Conrad, Nicole and Patry, Marc W.
(2012)
"Conscientiousness and Academic Performance: A Mediational Analysis,"
International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:
Vol. 6:
No.
1, Article 8.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2012.060108
Supplemental Reference List with DOIs