Boosting Students’ Academic Performance: Trait-State Model of Academic Achievements in Higher Education

Table 2.
Estimated indirect effects on academic performance and their bootstrapped percentile 90% confidence intervals.

	Path Chain	Estimate	Percentile 90% CI
1.	Trait Intrinsic Motivation → Creative Cognition → Positive Affect → Academic Performance	.029*	.020 – .197
2.	Trait Intrinsic Motivation → Creative Cognition → Deep Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.001	-.224 – .187
3.	Trait Intrinsic Motivation → Deep Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.001	-.201 – .152
4.	Adaptive Metacognition → Creative Cognition → Positive Affect → Academic Performance	.014*	.009 – .095
5.	Adaptive Metacognition → Creative Cognition → Strategic Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.008	-.073 – .052
6.	Adaptive Metacognition → Creative Cognition → Deep Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.001	-.116 – .088
7.	Adaptive Metacognition → Positive Affect → Academic Performance	.032*	.021 – .236
8.	Adaptive Metacognition → Strategic Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.026	-.226 – .153
9.	Adaptive Metacognition → Deep Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	.000	-.178 – .215
10.	Creative Cognition → Positive Affect → Academic Performance	.052*	.038 – .358
11.	Creative Cognition → Strategic Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.030	-.271 – .186
12.	Creative Cognition → Deep Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.003	-.412 – .342
13.	Maladaptive Metacognition → Surface Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.025	-.319 – .102
14.	Maladaptive Metacognition → Negative Affect → Academic Performance	-.019	-.397 – .149
15.	Maladaptive Metacognition → Evaluation Anxiety → Negative Affect → Academic Performance	-.006	-.130 – .048
16.	Trait Extrinsic Motivation → Surface Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	.009	-.069 – .219
17.	Trait Extrinsic Motivation → Evaluation Anxiety → Negative Affect → Academic Performance	-.002	-.073 – .027
18.	Trait Extrinsic Motivation → Evaluation Anxiety → Surface Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.006	-.103 – .030
19.	Evaluation Anxiety → Surface Approach to Studying → Academic Performance	-.032	-.394 – .109
20.	Evaluation Anxiety → Negative Affect → Academic Performance	-.013	-.268 – .096

* p < .05 (Normal test, 1-tailed)

Figure 1.

The hypothesized chained mediation model of academic performance.



Notes. "-" indicates a negative association. Continuous lines represent paths that have received some empirical support in prior studies, whereas dotted lines represent paths that were tested for the first time in this study.

Figure 2.

The estimated chained mediation model of academic performance with prior academic performance and positive affect in studying being the only significant direct predictors of current semester academic performance.



Notes. n = 373.

* p < .05 (1-tailed), ** p < .01 (1-tailed).

1 No hypothesis was posited for the strategic approach to studying because both types of motivation may contribute to it depending on contextual factors that were not assessed in the present study.

2 The prior academic performance of first year undergraduate students was calculated on either the grades they obtained in their foundation degree (if they took part in this study during the first semester of the first year of their undergraduate degree) or the grades they obtained in the first semester of the first year of their undergraduate degree (if they took part in this study during the second semester of the first year of their undergraduate degree). Postgraduate students’ grades were all gathered in the second semester of their postgraduate degree, and hence the grades from the first semester of their postgraduate degree were used to calculate their prior academic performance.