Asee peer logo

Impact of Non-Cognitive Factors on First-Year Performance

Download Paper |

Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Student Success III: Affect and Attitudes

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/p.25545

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/25545

Download Count

656

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Ryan R. Senkpeil Purdue University, West Lafayette

visit author page

Ryan Senkpeil is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at Purdue University who's research is focused on non-cognitive factors that impact engineering student performance and developing interventions to improve students' non-cognitive factors.

visit author page

biography

Edward J. Berger Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-0337-7607

visit author page

Edward Berger is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education and Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, joining Purdue in August 2014. He has been teaching mechanics for nearly 20 years, and has worked extensively on the integration and assessment of specific technology interventions in mechanics classes. He was one of the co-leaders in 2013-2014 of the ASEE Virtual Community of Practice (VCP) for mechanics educators across the country.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

This research paper describes the study of non-cognitive factors and their impact on student academic outcomes, including consideration of previous academic performance. The connection between prior academic performance factors, such as high school GPA and standardized test scores, and the performance of first year engineering students (as measured by GPA) has been well established. While it has been shown that up to 45% of the variation in first year student performance can be explained by a combination of high school GPA and standardized test scores, this still leaves over half of the variation unaccounted for. Some of this variation may be accounted for by a series of non-cognitive factors. A non-cognitive inventory was created using the 10-Item Big Five Survey, the Short Grit Survey, and two subscales from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Test Anxiety and Time and Study Environment). Data was collected using this survey from freshman and sophomore engineering students at a large, public research university in the Midwest. Using hierarchical multiple regressions, students’ first year grades were regressed onto their previous academic performance as well as their scores in the non-cognitive inventory. Initial results indicate that the inclusion of non-cognitive factors alongside previous academic performance improved the predictability of students’ first year GPA by an additional 16 percentage points compared to a model that only included previous performance. The paper suggests both a theoretical grounding for this result, as well as possible implications for student support services.

Senkpeil, R. R., & Berger, E. J. (2016, June), Impact of Non-Cognitive Factors on First-Year Performance Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25545

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015