Confidence: the best non-cognitive predictor of academic achievement?

• Published in: Educational psychology (Dorchester-on-Thames) Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 9 - 28
• Main Authors: Stankov, Lazar, Morony, Suzanne, Lee, Yim Ping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dorchester-on-Thames Routledge 02-01-2014; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Academic Achievement; Anxiety; Cognitive Ability; Confidence; Educational psychology; Emotional Adjustment; English (Second Language); Factor Analysis; Foreign Countries; Item Analysis; Mathematics Achievement; mathematics anxiety; Mathematics Skills; Measurement; Memory; Mental Health; Predictor Variables; Program for International Student Assessment; Regression (Statistics); Role; Second Language Learning; Secondary School Students; Self Concept; Self Efficacy; self-beliefs; self-constructs; Singapore; Social Adjustment; Student Attitudes; Surveys; Singapore
• ISSN: 0144-3410; 1469-5820
• DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2013.814194

Recent efforts to identify non-cognitive predictors of academic achievement and school success have largely focused on self-constructs such as self-efficacy, self-concept and anxiety that are measured with respect to a specific domain (e.g. mathematics). We extend the measurement of the non-cognitive realm in education to incorporate both social and psychological adjustment variables and ratings of confidence in addition to these self-constructs. Our findings show that confidence explains most of the variance in achievement captured by the other self-constructs combined, and that psychological adjustment variables add little to the equation. Furthermore, in contrast to other cognitive and non-cognitive variables, confidence accounts for 46.3% of total variance in achievement, while measures of previous cognitive performance in combination with other non-cognitive variables account for 40.5% of the total variance. We discuss the ways in which confidence is important in education.