Academic self-concept under typical and maximal environmental press

Abstract

Academic self-concept (ASC) refers to one's beliefs about himself or herself in academic situations. ASC has been found to be moderately correlated with academic performance when ASC and academic outcome measures are in the same domain and at the same level of specificity. It was hypothesized that differentiating between ASC under typical versus maximal environmental press may increase its predictive validity by providing further specificity to items and thus greater reliability to ASC scales. In this study, a battery of assessments was administered to Georgia Tech undergraduates in order to examine the factor structure of new measures of typical and maximal ASC, as well as their predictive and construct validities. A two-factor model fit the data better than a one-factor model, but did not meet criteria for good fit. Most hypotheses about the relationship between typical and maximal ASC and other constructs were not supported, though gender differences were found which may indicate an interesting line of future research.