Does confidence raise grades by shaping expectations and values?
Students' confidence in their academic skills was linked to better grades and satisfaction only indirectly, through how much they expected to succeed and valued the subject.
Source
Self-Efficacy, Satisfaction, and Academic Achievement: The Mediator Role of Students' Expectancy-Value Beliefs
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Two-wave correlational survey in secondary classrooms analysed with structural equation modelling of mediation
- N
- N=797 · 797 students from 36 classes in three schools; the sample was randomly split into halves of 399 and 398 for factor analyses, and a few students with incomplete scales were dropped
- Population
- Spanish compulsory secondary students aged 12 to 17
- Outcome
- Term grades and satisfaction with the teaching process
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
Students in 36 secondary classes in eastern Spain completed an academic self-efficacy scale and an expectancy-value scale midway through the first term. Grades and satisfaction with the teaching process were collected midway through the third term. Structural equation models tested whether expectancy-value beliefs (success expectations, subject value, expected feelings with the teacher, expected cost) mediated the self-efficacy effects.
What they found
On its own, self-efficacy significantly predicted both achievement and satisfaction. Once expectancy-value beliefs were added, self-efficacy strongly predicted those beliefs, which in turn predicted grades and satisfaction, while the direct path from self-efficacy became non-significant, consistent with full mediation. Achievement expectations, subject value and expected satisfaction with the process loaded most strongly on the mediating factor.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is correlational data, so it cannot show that raising self-efficacy would cause better grades; self-efficacy and expectancy-value beliefs were measured at the same time, so their ordering rests on theory. All measures except grades are self-report, and the schools come from one region of Spain. Mediation was tested with the older Baron and Kenny steps, and some model fit indices were only borderline.
Key terms
- Self-efficacy
- A person's belief in their own ability to organise and carry out actions that produce a desired result.
- Expectancy-value theory
- A motivation theory saying effort and achievement depend on how well people expect to do and how much they value the task.
- Mediation
- When one variable's effect on an outcome works through an intermediate variable.
- Structural equation modelling
- A statistical method that tests a network of relationships among latent (underlying) variables at once.
- Cross-validation
- Splitting a sample so a structure found in one half is tested on the other half.
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Quiz yourself
What statistical approach tested the mediation hypotheses?
Common questions
Does this mean self-efficacy doesn't matter for grades?
No. Self-efficacy predicted grades, but the model suggests it works by shaping students' expectations and valuing of the subject rather than directly.
Can teachers use this?
The authors suggest assessing students' beliefs early in a course and explaining a subject's value, but the study did not test any such intervention.
Why measure satisfaction as well as grades?
The authors treat satisfaction as an emotional outcome that affects whether students persist, complementing grades as a sign of teaching quality.
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