Academic locus of control: a relevant variable at tertiary level?

Higher Education 16:221-229 (1987) �9 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (Kluwer), Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands 221

Academic locus of control: a relevant variable at tertiary level?

DAVID WATKINS Department of Education, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract. A survey of 744 first year students at an Australian university provides no evidence of significant sex, age, or faculty differences in those students' perceptions of their control over their own learning. A follow-up survey of 182 of this sample over two years later suggests that neither maturation nor the impact of tertiary study has brought about a significant change in these students' academic locus of control. However, cross-lagged analysis indicates that accepting responsibility for learning was causally dominant over the adoption of less superficial and more achievement oriented learning strategies. Implications of these findings for study skills training programmes are briefly outlined.

Introduction

Children's perceptions of the reasons for their successes and failures in achievement situations have been theorised as having major educational implications (Bar-Tal, 1978; Weiner, 1979). This theoretical position has largely been confirmed by research. Thus a meta-analysis by Findley and Cooper (1983) found an average correlation of around 0.30 between measures of academic locus of control and academic achievement. It appears that, as Stipek and Weisz (1981, p. 130) express it,

Performance is optimized when children accept responsibility for their successes, and understand that effort and persistence can overcome failures.

The work of Weiner (1979) shows that self-perceptions of pride and compe- tence are enhanced by a success only if the child accepts responsibility for that success. There is also evidence that certain children, such as females or those from a non-Caucasian ethnic group, might need to be taught this relationship more explicitly in order to improve their academic performance (Bar-Tal, 1978).

Theorists such as Lefcourt (1976) have hypothesised a developmental trend in perception of control - believing that increasing internality tends to be as- sociated with increasing age. This has recently been confirmed by Sherman

The data reported here were collected while the author was a Research Fellow in the Office for Research in Academic Methods at the Australian National University. Parts of the data were dis- cussed in a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Higher Education Research and De- velopment Society of Australasia, Canberra, 1986.

222

(1984) who found clear evidence of increases in internal perception in children between the ages of 8 and 13. However, whether "locus of control" is such a central variable in the context of tertiary education is a more open question. It is true that Bowen (1977, p. 112) concluded that "There is an abundance of evidence about personal self-discovery during college and related changes in values, attitudes, and life choices." Yet the meta-analysis by Findley and Coop- er (1983) indicated that the academic achievement/locus of control relationship is considerably weaker at college compared to high school level. Moreover, Wolfle and Robertshaw (1982), in a follow-up study of some 8,650 high school students, found that acquisition of a college education had little impact on perceptions of internal control.

It appears then that there is doubt both about the influence of higher education on perception of control and whether the latter is related to success at tertiary level. However, writers have recently stressed the likely importance of self- control of learning if a student is to adopt a deep level approach to learning where the student focuses on the meaning of what he or she is studying (Biggs, 1985; Ramsden, 1985; McCombs, 1986). Such an approach is necessary if the student is to achieve the high quality learning outcomes expected at this level but often not reflected in tertiary grades themselves (Watkins, 1983a; Van Ros- sum and Schenk, 1984). Unfortunately there is evidence from both the United Kingdom (Entwistle, 1985; Selmes, 1986) and Australia (Biggs, 1985; Watkins and Hattie, 1985), that superficial learning strategies are adequate for success at school level and that students are entering university still reliant largely on rote learning strategies. The latter study indicates that few find it necessary to change their approach to learning to succeed at university.

As yet, the research evidence to support the contention that awareness of the need for self-control over learning is a pre-condition of a deep level approach is not strong. Although there is evidence of a significant relationship between deeper level learning and an internal locus of control (Ramanaiah, Ribich and Schmeck, 1975; Watkins, 1984; Watkins and Astilla, 1984) there is little data from which it can be concluded that this relationship is causal in nature. One of the purposes of this research, therefore, was to investigate the presence of causal predominance between locus of control and measures of the student's approach to learning. It was predicted that an internal locus of control should be a causal factor in the students becoming less reliant on surface level strategies and in the adoption of deeper level and more achievement oriented approaches to studying.

The above proposition was examined in a longitudinal study which followed students from their first to their third year of tertiary study. Other aims of this research were to explore possible differences in the first year's academic locus of control according to age, sex, and faculty and to see if there was any evidence of a shift in these students' perception of control from first to third year.

223

Method

Subjects

The subjects in the initial survey were 744 undergraduate students who were then in their first year of study at the Australian National University (A.N.U.). The students sampled were enrolled in the faculties of Arts (n = 386), Science (n = 217) and Economics (n = 141); their median age was 21 years; and 42 percent were male.

The follow-up survey was carried out over two years later when the students were in their third and, in many cases, final year of study at A.N.U. This survey was sent out to an approximately one-in-two sample of those in the original sample still enrolled at A.N.U. The response rate to both the initial and follow- up survey was around 65 percent - quite reasonable for a mail survey of this type. The final follow-up sample consisted of 182 students whose composition according to faculty, age, and sex was very similar to the initial sample.

Instruments

Academic locus of control was measured by a tertiary form of the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility (IAR) questionnaire devised by Perry (1982), based on Crandall, Katkovsky, and Crandalrs (1965) instrument. The IAR contains 24 forced-choice items concerning achievement experiences common to the lives of tertiary students. Twelve of the items assess negative IAR or willingness to accept personal responsibility for failure ( I A R - ) while the other

twelve assess positive IAR or willingness to accept personal responsibility for success (IAR+). A typical item is as follows:

If you do especially well in a course, it is usually because: a) the course was especially easy, or b) you worked especially hard?

Answer (b) would be scored 1 for an internal response and would contribute to the IAR + total score; answer (a), an external response, would be scored 0. As different results are commonly found for responsibility for successes and failures these two aspects were analysed separately here.

The students' learning processes were assessed by the Approaches to Study- ing inventory (Ramsden and Entwistle, 1981). The three scales which were uti-

lised in this research are the Meaning Orientation (MO), Reproducing Orienta- tion (RO), and Achieving Orientation (AO) scales. These scales were intended to measure the deep level approach to learning, the surface level approach and

224

the achievement oriented approach, respectively. All three learning processes and the two IAR scales were found in this and previous Australian research to have satisfactory internal consistency reliability coefficients for research pur-

poses with a's around 0.80. Evidence for the validity of the learning process scales with Australian students was provided by Watkins (1983b).

Analysis

Possible differences in the first year students' IAR scores were examined in an age • sex • faculty Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The first year IAR scores were also correlated with first year A.N.U. grade point average for each of the three main faculties. Evidence of any change in the students' locus of control

was examined by a repeated measures ANOVA. The cross-lagged panel analysis technique was utilised to investigate the pos-

sible causal predominance of locus of control over approach to learning. This analytic technique is designed to go beyond normal correlational methods to allow tentative inferences of causal predominance (Kenny, 1975; Wolf, Chan- dler and Spies, 1981). The technique is quasi-experimental in nature, requiring no manipulation of an independent variable, and the variables are measured

in the field, thus increasing the representativeness of the findings. The basic idea is that causes are assumed to have temporal precedence over effects. Thence if we measure two variables, A and B say, at Time 1 and Time 2 the construct at Time 1 with the larger of the two correlations at Time 2 is consid-

ered causally predominant. Thus, in Figure 1, if rA2B1 > rA1B2, B is considered causally predominant over A. An advantage of this approach is that it does

not necessarily assume the direction of causation, as is necessary in an experimental design where an independent variable is chosen a priori, and it al-

lows the investigation of reciprocal causation. A major danger with drawing causal inferences from such data is that the

observed cross-lagged differential is spurious in nature. This can occur due to either random error or the presence of a third variable accounting for the relationship. In order to rule out this possibility the conditions of stationarity and synchronicity must be met to a reasonable degree. Kenny (1975) argues that "synchronicity" is satisfied as long as the two variables are administered at approximately the same time at each of the two measurement stages. This was the case in this study as the measures were included in the same survey form. "Stationarity" means that the causal process should not change over time. In the language of Figure 1, rAIB1 should not be significantly different from rA2B2. The fulfilment of this requirement will be examined in the Results sec- tion of this paper. The significance of any cross-lagged correlation differential was investigated using the Pearson-Filon test as recommended by Kenny

(1975).

Time 1 Ts 2

AI' ~ 'rAiA2 .~A2

AIB 2 ~ rBIA2/I

rAiB1 ~A2B2

Fig. 1. Diagram of cross-lagged panel correlations.

225

Results

The results of the age x sex x faculty ANOVA of the first year data are shown in Table 1. It is clear that there is no evidence of any age, sex, or faculty differences in the 744 students' scores on either the IAR+ or I A R - scales.

The correlations between first year grades and initial survey IAR+ and I A R - scores were - . 0 1 and - . 0 3 , respectively which did not differ significantly from zero at .05 level. No higher correlations were found when the data were analysed separately for each faculty.

The means of those students in both the initial and follow-up survey on the

Table 1. Summary "F" Statistics of ANOVA of internal locus of control for success ( I A R + )

and failure ( I A R - ) by sex (S), age (A) and faculty (F) from first year survey (n = 744).

Effects IAR + IAR -

Sex 0.00 0.92

Age 1.09 0.98

Faculty 0.88 2.35 S • 0.05 0.13

S x F 0.40 0.98

A x F 0.90 1.27

S x A x F 0.10 0.40

p> .05 in all cases.

226

Table 2. Means of responses to internal locus of control scales for success (IAR + ) and failure

( I A R - ) from first and third year surveys by sex and faculty.

IAR + IAR -

1st year 3rd year 1st year 3rd year

ARTS

Males (n = 17) 9.00 9.35 9.82 9.29

Females (n = 64) 8.90 9.06 8.87 9.05

SCIENCE

Males (n = 36) 7.82 8.19 8.11 7.64

Females (n=23) 8.64 8.17 8.00 7.52

ECONOMICS

Males (n = 23) 8.64 8.26 9.00 8.22

Females (n = 15) 9.13 8.73 8.53 8.00

IAR + and IAR- scales are shown in Table 2. The repeated measures ANOVA showed that there were no significant (p < .01) change in these students' locus of control scores from first to third year.

The results of the cross-lagged panel analyses are shown in Table 3. The similarity of the pairs of synchronous correlations obtained indicate that the assumptions of stationarity were fairly well satisfied, particularly where RO and AO were involved.

Table 3. Cross-lagged and other correlations between internal acceptance of responsibility (IAR)

and meaning (MO), reproducing (RO) and achieving (AO) orientations to learning.

Coefficients Pearson- Filon

Cross-lagged Stability Synchronous z test

I A R I - M O 2 M O I - IAR 2 IAR l - I A R 2 M O I - M O 2 I A R 1 - M O 1 1 A R 2 - M O 2

IAR+ .02 .06 .34** .59** .21 .09

I A R - .09 .04 .44** .59** - . 0 8 .07

IAR 1 - RO 2 RO 1 - IAR 2 IAR 1 - I A R 2 RO 1 - RO 2 IAR 1 - RO 1 IAR 2 - RO 2 IAR + - . 1 8 " .00 .34** .45** - .21"* - .25** - 1.97"

1AR- - . 1 9 " - . 11 .44** .45** - . 1 3 - . 13 0.87

IAR 1 - A O 2 AO 1 - I A R 2 IAR 1 - I A R 2 A O l - A O 2 IAR 1 - A O 1 1 A R 2 - A O 2 IAR + .26** .08 .34** .59** .23** .26** 2.00*

IAR - .00 - . 0 5 .44** .59** - .01 .03 -

** p<0.01.

* p < 0 . 0 5 .

227

There was no evidence of any significant relationship, let alone a causal one,

between MO and either IAR + or - . However, for IAR + there was evidence of a significant correlation with both RO and AO (a negative one with the former but a positive one with the latter). Moreover, inspection of the cross- lagged correlations indicates that the direction of causality ran from internal locus of control for success to both the Reproducing and Achieving Orienta- tions to learning. The Pearson-Filon test showed that both these cross-lagged differentials were significant at the .05 level. The size of these cross-lagged

differentials, both 0.18 in magnitude, are considered quite large by the stan- dards of the cross-lagged literature (cf. Wolf et al., 1981).

Discussion

The results obtained here, at first sight at least, are rather equivocal regarding the importance of academic locus of control for tertiary learning.

It is clear that degree of internal locus of control was not related to first year academic success at this Australian University. This is in line with the findings of the meta-analysis of Findley and Cooper (1983).

There is also no evidence of a developmental trend in locus of control. The mature age students did not differ significantly in internality from the recent school leavers in the first year survey. Moreover there was no evidence that

either maturation or the impact of higher education lead to increasing inter~ nality - this is in accord with the conclusions of Wolfle and Robertshaw (1982).

There would seem to be two plausible explanations of a failure to support Sherman's (1984) evidence that internal perception increases with age. Firstly, it is very possible that this developmental trend does not normally extend be-

yond early adolescence and so would not be expected with tertiary students. Secondly it may be that those who reach university level have already max- imised their internal perceptions of control. The second contention (together with the objection that there may be a ceiling effect on the IAR itself) seems unlikely given that the means obtained on the internality scales were around 8 out of a possible maximum of 12.

The writer's suspicion that faculty, age, and sex differences in approaches to learning found in previous research (cf. Watkins and Hattie, 1985) may be due to systematic differences in locus of control was not supported as no such main effect differences in locus of control were found here.

However, the results of this study do lend tentative support to the contention that the acceptance of personal control over one's learning successes is a causal factor in the adoption of less superficial and more achievement oriented approaches to learning. Surprisingly there was no evidence that internality was

228

related to a deep-level approach to learning. It is possible that this is due to many of the students at this university recognising that hard work and not over-relying on rote learning were required for good marks. However, they may not have been as convinced that a deep understanding of the material was necessary (cf. Watkins and Hattie, 1985).

Conclusions

The writer's view of these findings is that neither maturation nor current teaching methods at this Australian university have much impact on a student's perception of control over their own learning. However, it is this very perception which has a major influence on the students reducing their reliance on superficial learning strategies.

American academics also seem to believe that their teaching often has little impact on their students' locus of control. Therefore it has been proposed that one aspect of a successful "study skills" programme should be to ensure that students learn to exercise control over their own learning (McCombs, 1986). Sherman (1985) suggests that such a programme should enable learners to recognise their own learning potential, and to accurately assess learning tasks; provide them with an adequate repertoire of learning skills; show them how to effectively match learning skills with learning tasks and how to monitor their own learning and use of skills. Training programmes using this perspec- tive have been implemented in the United States and it appears that they are successful in assisting students to become more effective learners. The findings of this research indicate that such a training programme could be beneficial for improving the quality of learning outcomes at the Australian National University as well.

References

Bar-Tal, D. (1978). "Attributional analysis of achievement-related behaviour", Review of Educa- tional Research 48: 259-271.

Biggs, J.B. (1985). "The role of meta-learning in study processes", British Journal of Educational Psychology 55: 185-212.

Bowen, H.R. (1977). Investment in Learning, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Crandall, V.C., Katkovsky, W. and Crandall, Y.Y. (1965). "Children's beliefs in their own control

of reinforcement in intellectual-academic achievement situations", Child Development 36: 91 - 109.

Entwistle, N.J. (1985). "Explaining individual differences in school learning", Paper presented at the first European Conference on Research on Learning and Instruction, Leuven.

Findley, D. and Cooper, H.M. (1983). "Locus of control and academic achievement: A literature review", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44: 419-427.

229

Kenny, D.A. (1975). "Cross-lagged panel Correlation: A test for spuriousness", Psychological Bulletin 82: 887-903.

Lefcourt, H.M. (1976). Locus of Control: Current Trends in Theory and Research, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

McCombs, B.L. (1986). "The role of the self-system in self-regulated learning", Paper presented at annual meeting of American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.

Perry, R. (1982). "A tertiary version of the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale", Private communication, University of Manitoba.

Ramanaiah, N.V., Ribich, ED. and Schmeck, R.R. (1975). "Internal/external control of reinforcement as a determinant of study habitats and academic attitudes", Journal of Research in Per- sonality 9: 375-384.

Ramsden, P. (1985). "Student learning research: retrospect and prospect", Higher Education Research and Development 4: 51-69.

Ramsden, P. and Entwistle, N.J. (1981). "Effects of academic departments on students' approaches to studying", British Journal of Educational Psychology 51: 368-383.

Rossum, E.J. van and Schenk, S.M. (1984). "The relationship between learning conception, study strategy and learning outcome", British Journal of Educational Psychology 54: 73- 83.

Sherman, L.W. (1984). "Developing perceptions of control: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses", Paper presented at Annual Conference of American Psychological Association, Toron- to, Canada.

Sherman, T.M. (1985). "Learning improvement programs: a review of controllable influences", Journal of Higher Education 56: 85-100.

Stipek, D.J. and Weisz, J.R. (1981). "Perceived personal control and academic achievement", Review of Educational Research 51: 101-137.

Watkins, D. (1983a). "Depth of processing and the quality of learning outcomes", Instructional Science 12: 49-58.

Watkins, D. (1983b). "Assessing tertiary study processes", Human Learning 2: 29-37. Watkins, D. (1984). "Student learning processes: an exploratory study in the Philippines", Human

Learning 3: 33-42. Watkins, D. and Astilla, E. (1984). "The dimensionality, antecedents, and study method correlates

of the causal attribution of Filipino children", Journal of Social Psychology 124: 191-199. Watkins, D. and Hattie, J. (1985). "A longitudinal study of the approaches to learning of Aus-

tralian tertiary students", Human Learning 4: 127-141. Weiner, B. (1979). "A theory of motivation for some classroom experiences", Journal of Educa-

tional Psychology 71: 3-25. Wolf, EM., Chandler, T.A. and Spies, C.J. (1981). "A cross-lagged panel analysis of quality of

school life and achievement responsibility", Journal of Educational Research 74: 363-368.

Wolfle, L.M. and Robertshaw, D. (1982). "Effects of college attendance on locus of control", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 43: 802-810.

Documents

Academic locus of control: a relevant variable at tertiary level?