Context-related problems and university students’ dropout intentions—the buffering effect of personal best goals

This study investigates the effects of contextual and motivational factors as well as, crucially, their interaction in predicting university students’ dropout intentions. We focus on context-related problems in students’ degree program as contextual factors and students’ personal best goals (PB goal...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of psychology of education 2020-06, Vol.35 (2), p.477-493
Main Authors: Bardach, Lisa, Lüftenegger, Marko, Oczlon, Sophie, Spiel, Christiane, Schober, Barbara
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic disciplines
Achievement Need
College Students
Competition
Education
Educational Psychology
Foreign Countries
Goal Orientation
Goal setting
Graduate Students
Interaction
Learning
Learning Strategies
Motivation
Outcomes of Education
Pedagogic Psychology
Potential Dropouts
Secondary school students
Structural Equation Models
Student Motivation
University students
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study investigates the effects of contextual and motivational factors as well as, crucially, their interaction in predicting university students’ dropout intentions. We focus on context-related problems in students’ degree program as contextual factors and students’ personal best goals (PB goals) as motivational factors. The sample of this study comprised 432 university students (74.3% female) enrolled in master’s degree programs at Austrian universities. Data was analyzed by means of structural equation modeling and latent moderated structural equation modeling. The results indicated that PB goals were negatively associated with dropout intentions, while context-related problems were positively associated with dropout intentions. In addition, the context-related problems × PB goals interaction effect proved significant and negatively predicted dropout intentions. By showing that the positive relation between context-related problems and dropout intentions can be reversed by increasing PB goals, we provide empirical evidence of the buffering effect of PB goals in the face of context-related problems.
ISSN:0256-2928
1878-5174
DOI:10.1007/s10212-019-00433-9