From Belief to Achievement: Examining the Interplay Between Academic Self-Efficacy and Weekly Academic Experiences

IDA alumna Nithila Ramesh presented her Master thesis at the graduation ceremony of the IDA cohort 2022-2024.

Academic self-efficacy is closely associated with favourable academic outcomes and well-being. It has been thought to have a bidirectional relationship with academic mastery experiences, however, this has not been empirically studied using multiple measurement occasions across a short time period. Further, beyond the lack of mastery experiences, academic failure experiences are associated with decreases in performance and academic self-efficacy, however, the within-person associations between failure experiences and academic self-efficacy has never been researched empirically. This study examined the prospective within-person bidirectional relationships between academic self-efficacy and weekly academic mastery and failure experiences, through a weekly diary study conducted across six weeks, in a sample of Bachelor Psychology students. Data was analysed using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. Contrary to expectations, no prospective bidirectional associations were found from one week to the next. However, students’ self-efficacy expectations for the upcoming week were associated with their reports of academic experiences during the previous week, measured simultaneously. This suggests that students may be keeping shorter time periods in mind when evaluating their self-views. Therefore, focusing on fairly recent academic experiences and current self-efficacy may be beneficial when creating interventions to boost academic self-efficacy. The current study contributes to the understanding of the influences of academic experiences and academic self-efficacy and guides future interventions looking to foster student well-being and academic success. 

Keywords: academic self-efficacy, academic mastery, mastery experiences, academic failure, academic performance, university students, random-intercept cross-lagged panel model

Congratulations Nithila and best of luck with your future career!