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Psicothema was founded in Asturias (northern Spain) in 1989, and is published jointly by the Psychology Faculty of the University of Oviedo and the Psychological Association of the Principality of Asturias (Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos del Principado de Asturias).
We currently publish four issues per year, which accounts for some 100 articles annually. We admit work from both the basic and applied research fields, and from all areas of Psychology, all manuscripts being anonymously reviewed prior to publication.

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  • Director: Laura E. Gómez Sánchez
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Predicting academic achievement in adolescents: The role of maturity, intelligence and personality

Fabia Morales-Vives, Elisa Camps, and Jorge Manuel Dueñas

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Background: Very few studies have examined whether the degree of adolescents’ maturity has any effect on their academic performance. Moreover, there are no studies that show whether maturity explains variance additional to that explained by intelligence and personality. For this reason, the main aim of the current study was to determine how psychological maturity, the Big Five personality traits and mental aptitudes contribute to the prediction of adolescent academic performance. Method: 305 adolescents took part in the study. We performed correlations, multiple regression analysis and structural equation analysis. Results: As expected, results show that the main predictor is intelligence. The results also show that there is a relationship between psychological maturity and academic performance, although this is due only to the work orientation subscale. Moreover, conscientiousness influences academic performance because of its relation to the maturity factor work orientation. Likewise, openness to experience is also indirectly related to academic performance, due to its relationship with intelligence. Conclusions: The results of the current study suggest that psychological maturity is related to academic performance. Only two personality traits are correlated to academic performance, conscientiousness and openness to experience, although these traits do not have direct relationships with academic performance.

Predicción del rendimiento académico en adolescentes: el papel de la madurez, la inteligencia y la personalidad. Antecedentes: se han realizado muy pocos estudios sobre la posible influencia de la madurez sobre el rendimiento académico. Además, no hay estudios que muestren si la madurez explica varianza adicional a la explicada por la inteligencia y la personalidad.  Por ello, el principal objetivo de este estudio es determinar cómo la madurez, los Cinco Grandes y las aptitudes mentales contribuyen a la predicción del rendimiento académico en adolescentes. Método: la muestra está formada por 305 adolescentes. Calculamos correlaciones, análisis de regresión múltiple y ecuaciones estructurales. Resultados: como se esperaba, los resultados muestran que el principal predictor es la inteligencia. Se obtuvo una relación entre madurez y rendimiento académico, que se debe únicamente a la subescala orientación al trabajo. Por otra parte, la responsabilidad influye sobre el rendimiento académico a través de su relación con el factor de madurez orientación al trabajo. Apertura a la experiencia también está indirectamente relacionado con el rendimiento académico, debido a su relación con la inteligencia. Conclusiones: los resultados sugieren que la madurez psicológica está relacionada con el rendimiento académico. Solo dos rasgos de personalidad correlacionaron con el rendimiento (responsabilidad y apertura a la experiencia), aunque sus relaciones no son directas.

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