THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY TRAITS IN EXPLAINING ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY: EVIDENCE FROM A BUSINESS SCHOOL

Abstract

Although personality traits and self-efficacy beliefs have typically been studied
as offering independent explanations of academic functioning, there is growing
contention among researchers that the two are interrelated. Hence, the aim of
the present study is to determine whether personality traits, as defined by the Big
Five Framework, can explain the academic self-efficacy of students pursuing a
degree in business. Undergraduate students from a business school in Bangladesh
have been chosen as the sampling frame and responses have been obtained from
178 of these students on two self-reported questionnaires, measuring personality
and academic self-efficacy, respectively. Using hierarchical regression, it
is found that conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, and
agreeableness each has a significant positive association with academic selfefficacy.
The study yields the conclusion that academic self-efficacy indeed has
a dispositional basis, and the relative influence of different traits is contingent
on the academic discipline in question. Hence, in order to raise the self-efficacy
of students, educators must take inherent differences in personality into account,
as well as the ways in which these interact with the learning environment to
influence students’ self-efficacy.