CCLEO: The Effect of Gender, Subjective Social Status and Big Five Personality Traits on Achievement and Attendance in a Lecture-Based Undergraduate Psychology Module

Abstract

Background: Whilst intelligence has long been known to influence academic success, many other factors also have an effect. Identifying and understanding which factors influence academic performance and engagement is vital for improving higher education teaching.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between two sets of variables. Set 1 consisted of grades and attendance and set 2 consisted of gender,subjective social status and the Big Five personality factors.Methods: For this reason, 47 undergraduate psychology students (89.4% female) were recruited at the University of Bradford. Participants filled out an online questionnaireconsisting of the Big Five Inventory, the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status and a question regarding gender. Grade and attendance data for one university module wereobtained from the university data archive. A canonical correlation analysis was carried out on SPSS.Results: Neither of the canonical functions were found to be significant. The results indicated that there were no significant relationships between set 1 (grades and attendance) and set 2 (gender, subjective social status and personality factors).Conclusion: These results did not confirm the hypotheses and contradict previous research. However, it is likely that the small sample size and imbalance of gender in the sample influenced, if not caused these findings. The implications of this study and considerations for future research are discussed.