Investigating the achievement goals of university students in terms of psycho-social variables

Abstract

It is the aim of this research to investigate the achievement goals of university students. Firstly, university students’ adoption levels of achievement goals are described. Next, how their level of academic self-efficacy, irrational beliefs, perfectionism, self-determination, locus of control and gender predict each achievement goal is depicted. The participants consisted of 1509 university students. The findings showed that students generally adopted the mastery-approach at a high level, mastery-avoidance at a medium level, and both performance-approach and performance-avoidance at a low level. Furthermore, according to the results of hierarchical regression analysis, it was found that perfectionism related to higher standards, academic self-efficacy, perfectionism related to order, self-determination, internal locus of control, perfectionism related to dissatisfaction and gender (female) predicted the mastery-approach achievement goal significantly. Mastery-avoidance achievement goal was significantly predicted by perfectionism related to higher standards, irrational beliefs, perfectionism related to order and discrepancy and gender (female). Irrational beliefs, academic self-efficacy, perfectionism related to discrepancy, self-determination and gender (male) significantly predicted the performance-approach achievement goal. Irrational beliefs, perfectionism related to the discrepancy, self-determination, perfectionism related to higher standards and academic self-efficacy significantly predicted the performance avoidance achievement goal.