Belief and achievement: Examining the interplay between academic self-efficacy and weekly academic experiences

We are proud to share that the Master Thesis of our alumna Nithila Ramesh (IDA alumna), who worked under the supervision of Patrick Klaiber (IDA staff), was featured in the journal Acta Psychologica. We congratulate the authors on this publication and wish you an enjoyable read!

Highlights:
— Six-week diary study with university students across an entire academic block
— Within-person coupling of academic self-efficacy and academic experiences
— However, no prospective relationship from one week to the next
— Students maybe considering fairly recent academic experiences for self-efficacy judgement.

Abstract: Academic self-efficacy is theorised to foster favourable academic outcomes. While academic self-efficacy is believed to have a reciprocal relationship with academic mastery experiences, longitudinal naturalistic investigations are currently lacking. Further, little is known about the short-term relationship between academic self-efficacy and academic failure experiences. This study fills this gap by examining 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 153 undergraduates. Investigating the antecedents and consequences of short-term fluctuations in academic self-efficacy has considerable practical relevance, as it can inform efforts to support students’ performance, persistence, and overall well-being. Data was analysed using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. Contrary to expectations, results showed that weekly fluctuations in academic experiences were not prospectively linked to fluctuations in self-efficacy and likewise, fluctuations in self-efficacy were not prospectively linked to fluctuations in academic experiences. Thus, our results provide no evidence for prospective bidirectional associations between minor academic experiences and self-efficacy. 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 short-term fluctuations in academic self-efficacy may be interlinked with immediate successes and failures. The absence of weekly cross-lagged effects and the presence of concurrent effects between academic self-efficacy and experiences can inform researchers and educators on the timescale of any short-term effects of minor academic experien

Keywords: Academic performance, Mastery experiences, Failure experiences, Self-efficacy, Random-intercept cross-lagged panel model

CITATION: Ramesh, N., & Klaiber, P. (2026). Belief and achievement: Examining the interplay between academic self-efficacy and weekly academic experiences. Acta Psychologica, 263, 106300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106300

You can reach the full article via this link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106300

Image Credit:

Artwork from the website “Talk to angel”

Abstract impressionist artwork created by the editor using DALL·E.