Locus of Control, Academic Self-Concept, and Attribution of Responsibility for Performance in Statistics

Abstract

To explain examination performance in a course on statistical methods in psychology by 33 men and 28 women undergraduates in psychology ( M age = 24.1 yr.), the roles of causal attributions, locus of control for classroom beliefs, and academic self-concepts were explored. Students who made ability or effort attributions performed better and had higher internal control scores than students with task or luck ascriptions. Also, scores on academic self-concept correlated .33 with academic performance. Students high on academic self-concept performed better than those with low academic self-concept.