Impact of personal, institutional factors and learning styles on academic performance: an analysis with accounting students

Abstract

The research aims to verify the influence of personal, institutional factors, and learning styles on accounting students' academic performance in the disciplines with the highest failure rate in a Higher Education Institution. Data collection took place through a questionnaire applied to students of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years, and 229 valid responses were obtained. To test the hypotheses, descriptive and multivariate statistics (regression.) were used. The results indicate that some of the personal factors, such as shift, high school, marital status, experience in the area, extra-class study hours, age group, working hours, family members, housing, family economic participation, and family income, showed a statistically significant relationship with performance. Of the institutional components, the strategy of the course's pedagogical project had an influence, while structure, internal environment, technical system, and strategy of the faculty were not confirmed. Finally, the learning styles were found to be significant only in the discipline of Accounting Laboratory. Students with a converging style had a higher average than the other styles. Identifying these variables (characteristics pertinent to students and the institution) allows the coordination of the Accounting Sciences course and professors to study strategies to improve the academic results of these disciplines, which are the ones with the highest failure rate. It is also expected to contribute to an improvement in the National Student Performance Exam and Sufficiency Exam scores in the long run.

Keywords

• desempenho acadêmico
• fatores pessoais
• fatores institucionais
• estilos de aprendizagem.