Effort and ability attributions as explanation for differences in study choice after failure: evidence from a hypothetic
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Effort and ability attributions as explanation for differences in study choice after failure: evidence from a hypothetical vignette study among first-entry bachelor students in a Belgian university Sebastiano Cincinnato 1
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& Nadine Engels & Els Consuegra
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Received: 20 May 2019 / Revised: 10 October 2019 / Accepted: 25 October 2019 # Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa and Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract This study investigates to what extent differences in ability and effort attributions can explain students’ reluctance to reorient after failure in the first year at the university. Reluctance to reorient after failure increases the likelihood of drop out. The empirical investigation is based on a sample of fulltime first-entry bachelor students enrolled in a social or behavioural science study programme at a Belgian university (N = 432). These students were asked to assess their study choices in a hypothetical failure scenario. Logit regression indicates that attributing failure to lack of ability is associated with a stronger tendency to reorient after failure. Furthermore, path analysis suggests that male students’ reluctance to reorient after failure is at least partially explained by their weaker tendency to attribute failure to lack of ability. Given the malleability of attributions, we argue that study counselling services can benefit from the insights of this study. Keywords Higher education . Study choice . Student background . Attribution . Ability . Effort
Introduction Despite increased participation of disadvantaged students in higher education (HE), they are still relatively underrepresented in HE (e.g. Neugebauer et al. 2016; Reimer and Pollak 2010; Schindler and Reimer 2011; Tieben and Wolbers 2010; Tolsma et al. 2010; Triventi 2013), are often insufficiently prepared to excel academically the first year of HE (e.g. Kuh et al. 2008; van Rooij et al. 2018) and are, eventually, less likely to graduate (Alon and Gelbgiser 2011; Arias Ortiz and Dehon 2013; Buchmann et al. 2008; Kuh et al. 2006; Reisel 2011; Rodgers 2013). This issue is a cause for public interest in many countries of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) for it * Sebastiano Cincinnato [email protected]
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Multidisciplinary Institute for Teacher Education (MILO), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 9, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
S. Cincinnato et al.
compromises the social inclusion agenda of the European Union (EU) (see European Commission/ EACEA/Eurydice, 2018). On top of that, there is a tension between social inclusion and quality assurance in HE (Vossensteyn et al. 2015). Providing high-quality education to an increasingly more diverse student population is demanding to HE institutions. Clark (1960, 1980) distinguished two types of institutional responses towards failure, defined as insufficient adherence to academic minimum standards, to safeguard quality in a context of broad accessibility of HE. The ‘hard’ response is to couple broad accessibility with strict selection of students aft
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