The Effect Of Achievement Goals On The Academic Performance Of College Students Of Different Classes

Based on the achievement goal approach and relevant theory on social class,the study aimed to explore the effects of achievement goals on the academic performance by testing the moderation of social class in two sub-studies among university students.By using survey research method,study 1 was to explore whether social class had a significant moderating effect on the relation between achievement goals and academic performance(i.e.,academic achievement and academic interest).With experimentation,study 2 induced mastery-approach,performance-approach,and performance-avoidance goals,investigating its influence on performance and interest and the moderating effect of social class.Study 1 surveyed 271 undergraduates(44 boys and 227 girls)through the online and offline questionnaires.Grounded in the research design,the data was collected in three times.The first-time questionnaire was conducted in mid October 2020,collecting data about demographic information,achievement goals,general academic ability and general academic interest.The second and third-time data collection was conducted in October 2020 and February 2021 on academic interest and the average score of final examinations.The results showed that:(1)performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals were positive predictors of academic achievement among the higher social class undergraduates,but there had no significant effect among the lower social class students.(2)Performance-approach goals positively predicted academic interest of both higher and lower social class undergraduates,but the effect was greater among the higher social class undergraduates.3)Performanceavoidance goals positively predicted the academic interest for the higher social class undergraduates,but had no significant effect for the lower social class undergraduates.Study 2 manipulated achievement goals to explore the influence of achievement goals on university students' task score and interest through experiment.A total of 185 undergraduates were recruited to participate in the research.With deleting 15 cases of failure of goal manipulation and missing data,170 valid undergraduates reminded in final data analysis,with25 boys and 145 girls.The results showed that the total reasoning task scores in the masteryapproach goal group was significantly higher than that of other goal groups among higher social class undergraduates;no significant difference was found among the lower social class undergraduates in different goal conditions.Achievement goals had no significant effect on task interest among both higher and lower social class undergraduates.In conclusion,achievement goals had different effects on the academic performance among high and low social class undergraduates,but the results were inconsistent between survey and experimental results.In the future,attention has been paid to the role of task characteristics in achievement goal experiments,and the participants' ask interest in different stages of completing the experimental task has been taken into account.