Causal attributions in low and high academic achievement university students in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to learn what attribution styles prevail among are First-Year students at universities in the Dominican Republic while also analysing how these attributions occur among high- and low-achieving students. The sample consists of 787 subjects (414 women and 373 men) and their average age was 18.3 (standard deviation 1.14). They study for different degrees at the University. The findings show that the internal causal attributions (related to capacity, skills and effort) are associated with high academic achievement and they affect and predict students’ good achievement to the same extent, meaning that we know that they provide achievement motivation while helping to develop positive expectations vis-à-vis academic achievement. On the other hand, it is the external causal attributions (related to tasks, teachers and luck) which are associated with low academic achievement and they have proven to be important when predicting it. We have therefore come to the conclusion that this type of external attributions inhibit and limit learning motivation.

Keywords

• atribuciones causales externas
• atribuciones causales internas
• motivación académica
• motivación de logro, rendimiento académico || external causal attributions
• internal causal attributions
• academic motivation
• academic achievement