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Higher Education 9 (1980) 443-451 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam Printed in the Netherlands

C A U S A L A T T R I B U T I O N OF P E R F O R M A N C E IN U N I V E R S I T Y E X A M I N A T I O N S : A FILIPINO I N V E S T I G A T I O N

D A V I D WATKINS Office/or Research in Academic Methods, Australian National University,

Canberra, Australia

ESTELA A S T I L L A University of San Carlos, Philippines

ABSTRACT

Causal a t t r ibu t ions for success and failure at a fo r thcoming examina t ion by 246 Fil ipino college freshmen, 64 male and 182 female, are examined. Al though there is no data with which to compare the results of this study, it would appear tha t these young Filipinos generally possessed adapt ive pat terns of a t t r ibut ion . They ascribed possible success somewhat more to internal ra ther than external sources but a t t r ibuted possible failure a lmost equally to these factors. Luck was perceived as being only of relatively minor importance. Internal success a t t r ibu t ion was found to correlate significantly with satisfaction with success in three out of four cases. Effort a t t r ibu t ion correlated significantly with the s tudents ' ratings of how hard they had tried. Cont ra ry to U.S. research, the female respondents if anyth ing possessed more adapt ive pat terns of a t t r ibu t ion than their male peers. It is suggested tha t this has been a neglected area of cross-cultural research but one that should be of concern to all developing countries.

Attribution Theory

The study of how an individual interprets the causes of his own and other people's success and failures has become a major area of psychological research in recent years. Significant insights into achievement-related behav- iors have been derived from the application of attribution theory to the development of an attribution model of achievement motivation (Weiner, 1972, 1974; Weiner et al., 1971). The basic assumption of this model is that beliefs about the causes of success and failure in some activity influence the

This research was conducted while the first au thor was on study leave at the University of San Carlos.

0018-1560/80/0000 0000/$02.25 �9 1980 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company

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subsequent feelings, expectations, and behavior towards that activity. Ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck have been shown to be the causes to which people most often attribute the outcome of a task performance (Falbo, 1975; Frieze, 1973). Weiner et al., classify these causal elements on two dimensions, internal/external and stable/unstable. Ability and effort are designated as internal because they originate within the person. As task difficulty and luck originate outside the person they are said to be external causes. Effort and luck being highly variable over time are considered unstable causes whereas ability and task difficulty being relatively unchanging are considered stable. Success attributed to ability, a stable internal cause, will not be reinforcing and will not increase perseverance. However, if success is attributed to effort an increase in motivation to persevere is likely. In a similar vein, failure attributed to lack of ability will reduce motivation to persevere but attribution to an unstable external factor, bad luck, will not reduce this motivation. The locus of control dimension (internality/externality) also influences the affective reaction to success and failure. People feel maximum pride when they can attribute their performance to either ability or effort, both internal causes. Shame results if failure is at tr ibuted to inability or lack of effort. The affective and motivational consequences of the model of causal attribution discussed above have been confirmed in laboratory studies (c.f. Andrews and Debus, 1978; Weiner, 1974; Weiner et al., 1972; Kukla, 1972). Other research has demonstrated a tendency to attribute success more than failure to internal factors and to unstable factors (Luginbuhl et al., 1975).

Educational Implications

Attribution theory clearly has major implications for educational prac- tice (Bar-Tal, 1978). Thus from the attribution model we would predict that students who perceive their academic failures as due to their lack of ability would expect to repeat failure as ability is seen as a stable cause. A student with such a belief may avoid achievement activities and so fail to realise his or her potential. Ascribing academic failure to low ability could well lead to reduced effort on future occasions. Little encouragement to try harder to succeed and to believe in one's ability is likely if an academic success is seen as being due to an easy test. However, the experiments that have been reported in this area have generally been in laboratory settings. A question still exists about the application of these methods and results to less artificial settings - particularly to that of real-life school and college examinations, situations of obvious importance to students (c.f. Luginbuhl et al., 1975; Simon and Feather, 1973).

Bar-Tal points out that the study of the influence of causal attribution on academic performance is particularly important because of evidence that the pattern of forming causal attributions may differ in various social groups such

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as males and females (Dweck and Bush, 1976; Nicholls, 1975) and black and white children (Friend and Neale, 1972). The findings suggest that females and blacks may perform below their abilities in a classroom situation because of their maladaptive attributions of causality. Moreover recent work has shown that some unsuccessful students can be trained to ascribe their failure to lack of effort rather than to low ability (Andrews and Debus, 1978; Dweck, 1975; Heckhausen, 1975). Hopefully this will lead to maximising the academic performance of such students.

Cross Cultural Studies

The concepts of "fatalism" and "sense of personal efficacy" have been used in recent years by social scientists to describe some of the differences between "modern" and "traditional" individuals within a culture undergoing social change (Inkeles and Smith, 1974). It is argued that modern individuals are less likely to believe that man has little control over his own fate and that life is little more than a game of chance. Most of the cross-cultural work related to this proposition has been from the perspective of Rotter's (1954; 1966) concept of internal versus external control of reinforcement. Rotter hypothesized that every individual develops a general expectancy regarding his or her ability to control life's events. Those persons who perceive the course of their lives to be determined by chance are said to have an expectancy of external control while those who feel that their own actions can influence their lives have an expectancy of inner control.

A number of studies have used Rotters own "I-E scale" but several investigators have pointed out that the mutidimensionali ty of this scale makes interpretation difficult (Nagelschmidt and Jakob, 1977; Cherlin and Bourque, 1974; Collins, 1973). Similar problems of interpretation probably beset other instruments in this area and may have lead to the contradictory findings reported in the literature. Thus we have Garza and Ames (1976) claiming Mexican-Americans to be more internal than Anglo-Americans but the opposite is reported by Scott and Phelon (1969) and Graves (1960). To further complicate the picture no difference between these groups was reported by Jessor et al., (1968) and Knight et al., (1978). Even given the measurement problems involved, the internal-external dimension is seen to be a potentially meaningful variable across cultures (Lao et al., 1977).

Despite the importance placed in the role of education for the develop- ment of third world countries (c.f. Smith and Inkeles, 1966) there appears to have been no investigation of causal attributions for educational achievement in such countries. This is so, even in the face of the evidence of racial differences in attribution and of the influence of attribution on performance in achievement situations. This paper reports an investigation of the causes

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ascribed by Filipino students for possible success and failure at a forthcoming university examination.

The Philippines Setting

The Philippines is one developing country that has not only recognized the place of education in nation building and the economic growth of the country but has largely succeeded in its aims of national literacy (estimated at 83.4%, second only to Japan in the Asian region; Overseas Employment Develop- ment Board, 1978), and universal schooling (it is estimated that 98% of 7-12 year old Filipinos will attend elementary school in the 1980s; National Economic Development Authori ty (NEDA), 1976). Tertiary education is seen as the only realistic means of social advancement by Filipinos and it is estimated that 20% of the 17-21 year olds will at tend college in the 1980s (NEDA, 1976). However, most Filipinos, including college graduates, still experience a standard of living, as measured by food consumption or other indices, well below that of Western countries.

Bonifacio (1977) states that a dominant value-orientation of the Filipino is the belief that man has little control over the course of his life. The Filipino, he writes, tends to interpret success or failure, whether his own or that of other people, as due to "suwerte" (good luck) and "malas" (bad luck). Bonifacio claims that this type of behavior is often used by students in interpreting examination results - those who pass say they are "suwerte" and those who fail are "malas". Certainly Filipino society is full of examples of the people's belief in the efficacy of luck. Various forms of gambling are prolific even in the poorer areas. Most retail stores in the major cities run raffles (often with cars as prizes) to entice customers, and newspaper and T.V. advertisements for the stores describe the raffle prizes rather than goods for sale at the store.

However, Guthrie (1977) reported the results of an investigation of the attitudes of Filipino men and women, living different distances from Manila, which found that the overwhelming majority, even from rural areas, showed modern rather than traditional attitudes. In particular most of his respondents emphasised the need for education, hard work and saving rather than relying on luck to improve their lot in life. He found little evidence of sex differences in these attitudes. Given the modern outlook of rural Filipinos it is not easy to explain the traditional farming methods and acceptance of relatively back- ward living conditions common in rural areas. Guthrie argues that rural people are remarkably optimistic. While they realize that hard work and investing in education may not improve their own lot, they are hopeful for their children. Guthrie goes on to suggest that many Filipinos, particularly in rural areas simultaneously hold a variety of traditional and modern beliefs:

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They spray their fields with insecticides and place figures at the field's edge out of respect for the unseen powers which influence the rice crop. They seek treatment for illness both from modern physicians and from healers who placate angry spirits (Guthrie, 1977, p. 198).

The Filipino literature then gives some reason to suspect that Filipino college students may display maladaptive patterns of attributional behavior. The student respondents here were asked to attribute the reasons for their performing both as desired and not as desired at their for thcoming examina- tions. By this means it was possible to determine and compare each subject's own perception of the causes of his or her future possible success or failure instead of attempting to manipulate (with perhaps dubious validity) success or failure situations as is commonly done in this area. Possible differences in defensive reactions to these different settings have been little studied to date.

This research then sets out to find answers such as: How do Filipino college students attr ibute the cause of their possible performances in a forthcoming examination? Do they attribute possible success and failure differently? Are there sex differences in these attributions? Do their attribu- tions influence their affective reaction to and preparation for the examination?

Method

SUBJECTS

Subjects were 246 Liberal Arts and Science Freshmen, 64 males and 182 females, at the University of San Carlos (USC), a large, prestigious, private institution located in Cebu City, a major city in the central Philippines. The students were mainly of 16 to 17 years of age and from Roman Catholic backgrounds - the few Moslem and foreign born students were excluded from the projects. It should be noted that all students used in this research had already met with considerable academic success and virtually all rated themselves as of being above average academically.

MATERIALS

Causal at tr ibution for their desired success in their forthcoming semester examination was determined by asking each subject:

If you have to apport ion the circle below to represent the proport ion of influence your (1) ability, (2) effort, (3) ease o f the task, and (4) luck will contribute to your getting the grades which you desire, how would you do it?

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They were similarly asked to apport ion the proport ion of influence which ability, effort, difficulty of the task, and luck would contribute to their failure to achieve their desired grades. Pre-testing and random follow up interviews ensured tha t these tasks were well understood and that the attributions did reflect the subjects' true feelings about the causes of their possible success or failure. The attribution responses of each subject for success and failure were translated into percentages by the first author (with an independent random check of a quarter of the sample by an assistant to ensure reliable scoring). The students were also asked to rate, on a ten-point Likert scale from 1 (extremely low) to 10 (extremely high) both how hard they had tried to succeed at college and the degree of satisfaction they would derive from obtaining their desired grades.

P R O C E D U R E S

The testing sessions were conducted during normal class periods in the last two weeks of first semester 1978, under the supervision of the second author. This research was part of a large scale institutional study of the USC freshmen.

Results

The subjects' responses to the attribution questions are summarised in Table I. It would appear that both the males and females at tr ibuted possible success much more to internal than external causes but that they almost equally attributed failure to these two sources. The males attributed both possible success and failure somewhat more to stable than unstable causes.

TABLE I

At t r ibu t ion of Possible Success and Failure at For thcoming University Examina t ion (expressed as a percentage)

Ability Effort Task Luck Internal Stable difficulty

Males (n = 64) Success 32.3 Failure 24.3

Females (n. = 182) Success 28.0 Failure 24.7

27.7 23.2 16.8 60.0 55.5 25.3 29.8 20.6 49.6 54. l

30.6 23.4 18.0 58.6 51.4 27.2 28.5 19.6 51.9 53.2

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The females also showed this trend but to a lesser extent. Luck was least often designated the cause of their performance by both males and females. The other external source, task difficulty, was most often seen as the cause of possible failure. Ability was perceived by both the males and females to be more a cause of success than failure. The females were slightly more likely to ascribe greater influence to effort than were the males.

The relationship between internal attributions and both success/failure conditions and male/female responses were investigated by a 2 X 2 )~nalysis of Variance with repeated measures on one factor, sex. As was suggested above, the success/failure factor provided a significant effect (F = 51.7 ( 1,244), p<0.001) but neither the sex nor interaction factor was significant (F = 0.29, 3.48(1,244), p>0.05 respectively). A similar ANOVA was carried out with the stable causes as the dependent variable. The sex factor was significant (F = 5.42(1,244), p<0.05) but neither the success/failure nor the interaction factor was (F = 0:65, 1.96(1,244), p>0.05, respectively).

It was predicted that a student should be more satisfied with a success attributed to internal sources. This was verified to some extent as satisfaction with success correlated significantly (p<0.05) with ability attribution for both males and females (r = 0.31 and 0.27 respectively) and also with effort attribution for males (r = 0.29) but not females (r = 0.08).

The expected relationship between effort attr ibution and amount of effort exerted in preparing for the examinat ion was also supported because of significant (p<0.05) correlations between the students' ratings of how hard they tried to succeed in their college work and effort at tr ibution (r = 0.26 males, r = 0.57 females).

Conclusions

Unfortunately the authors have been unable to find other studies of percentage attribution of performance in an approaching tertiary examination with which to compare the results obtained here. However, this investigation suggests that these Filipino students attached relatively minor importance to luck as a cause of their academic success or failure. They attributed success somewhat more to internal rather than external sources but attributed failure almost equally to these two factors. This finding is in line with the results of laboratory studies discussed earlier and would, according to attribution theory, allow these students to feel proud after a success. This prediction of the attribution model was partially supported when the correlation between internal attr ibution and ratings of satisfaction with success was examined. The importance of effort attributions was confirmed by a significant association between this ascription and the students' ratings of how hard they tried. Both success and failure were perceived as being slightly more due to stable rather

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than unstable sources - task difficulty being seen as particularly relevant as a cause of failure. It may well assist the performance of these students if lack of effort was perceived as a more likely source of failure than task difficulty.

Our results are more in accord with those of Guthrie who reported little difference between the attitudes of Filipino men and women in this area, rather than the U.S. studies which found that women tended to make more external attributions than men. In fact there is a suggestion that these female Filipino students possessed slightly more adaptive patterns of attribution than their male peers as they perceived effort as a more important source of success and failure than did the males.

To sum up it would appear that these Filipino students generally possessed adaptive patterns of causal attribution as regards their performance in university examinations. It must be remembered though that they had already been successful in reaching one of the leading universities in the country and whether their views reflect the attitudes of their unsuccessful peers is an open question, although Guthrie's work would suggest that this may be the case. Certainly there is a need for further such research with younger Filipino children, particularly those from lower class backgrounds. This is particularly important as the projects discussed earlier suggest that it is possible, by the use of programs of systematic reinforcement well within the grasp of ordinary teachers, to retrain children to adopt achievement- enhancing attributions. Surely this is an area of research which should be the concern of all developing countries wishing to maximise the use of their human resources.

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