Psychological Determinants of Academic Achievement in Accounting: Evidence from Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Mamede, Samuel de Paiva Naves
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Marques, Alessandra Vieira Cunha, Rogers, Pablo, Miranda, Gilberto José
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: BBR. Brazilian Business Review (English edition. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://www.bbronline.com.br/index.php/bbr/article/view/107
• topic: Student performance; Psychological scales; Locus of control; Desempenho discente; Escalas psicológicas; Lócus de controle

The proposal of this research was to investigate the association between psychological variables and academic performance of 494 students of accounting of a Brazilian public university. We seek, therefore, to highlight some psychological variables to understand the behavior of students of accounting courses. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire based on five psychological constructs: self-efficacy, self-esteem, optimism, locus of control and self-control. Regression analyses were used to identify the influence of the explanatory variables on the academic performance coefficient, with the main results showing that: (i) the variable smoking has a direct impact on the academic achievement of students; (ii) the academic performance of women is higher than that of men; (iii) students within the age range of 20 to 40 years have significantly lower performance than students of other age ranges, and (iv) the variable experience time in accounting is related with the students' performance.