Causal Attribution of Students to their Academic Achievement

This study examined causal attributions by college-age students regarding their academic achievement. A descriptive survey design was employed to measure the existing attribution level of the students. Simple random sampling method was used to select sample departments from each college, and representative samples were selected from each department based on academic rank. The total participants involved in this study were 104 second year students at Mizan-Tepi University in Ethiopia. They completed a multi-attributional causality scale with items related to ability, effort, context and luck dimensions. Means, independent sample t-tests, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for analysis. The results showed that the majority of students attributed their academic achievement to internal factors. Academic success was attributed to internal factors while academic failure was attributed to external factors. Moreover, high- and medium-achievers tended to attribute their academic achievement to effort and ability while students with low achievement were more likely to assign the causes of academic success and failure to luck. Sex differences revealed that males tended to attribute their academic achievement to ability, whereas for females there was no significant difference in their attribution to effort, context or luck.