Predicting School Achievement from Motivation and Personality

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Abstract
The present study aims at comparing the predictive power of motivation and broad personality traits for school performance and contributes to an understanding of the nomological network of personality. A sample of German adolescent students (N = 342 11th and 12th graders, age M = 16.94, SD = .71) gave self-reports of need for achievement, domain-specific ability self-concepts and task values in German and Math as well as the Big Five of personality. Grades in German and mathematics as well as grade-point average served as performance criteria. On a bivariate zero-order level, the motivational constructs showed the hypothesized positive associations with school achievement in Math, German, and GPA. With respect to personality, only Conscientiousness was consistently positively associated with grades, whereas Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Agreeableness were either not or weakly associated with one or two out of three performance criteria. Hierarchical and stepwise regression analyses were performed with grades in Math and German as well as GPA as dependent variables. When comparing motivation and personality, domain-specific ability self-concepts were the strongest predictors of all performance criteria. Together, the present results confirm the predominance of motivational concepts over the Big Five of personality for the prediction of performance criteria and substantiate the importance to integrate trait conceptions of motivation into the nomological network of personality.

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