A Longitudinal Study of Domain-Specificity of Ability and Effort Attributions in African American Students

• In Event: 68.036 - Youth Seeking Well-Being

Abstract

Students’ causal attributions about the reasons underlying their academic successes and failures influence their academic motivation and subsequent achievement. Little research has examined whether students’ attributions vary across academic subjects, and whether such domain-generality or specificity changes with development. African American students (N = 565) reported their causal attributions for math, science, and English successes longitudinally from elementary to high school. Structural equation modeling showed that individual differences in students’ tendencies to attribute successes to ability and effort were domain-general, not differing across academic content areas. Students’ attributions of success to ability decreased over time. Attributional retraining to encourage adaptive attributions in African American youth might generalize across academic domains, and might be especially beneficial in middle adolescence.

Authors

• Heidi Anahi Vuletich, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Beth E. Kurtz-Costes, University of North Carolina

• Stephanie J. Rowley, University of Michigan