Sex differences, personality and study difficulty in university students

Abstract

A study difficulty inventory and three sets of personality scales were administered to 145 students attending a university health centre. Motivational and psychoneurotic components of study difficulty were identified, which were differentially related in male and female students to basic personality characteristics and to psychiatric symptomatology. Syllabus-boundness emerged as more salient in the female students, and selfesteem in the males. Poor academic performance was found to be associated with distinctive personality profiles in the two sexes. Both intra-personality and social-psychological interactional factors appear to underlie the pattern of results.

Age‐group differences in the psychological well‐being and academic attainment of distance learners

“…Some interesting research into the question was carried out by a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and psychotherapists of University College London Health Centre in the 1970s (Crown et al, 1973;Lucas and Crown, 1974;Lucas et al, 1976;Crown et al, 1977;Stringer et al, 1977Stringer et al, , 1978. They attempted to develop a systematic way of delineating and measuring study difficulty in the affective domain only, as contrasted with the cognitive.…”