Big Five Factors and academic achievement in Russian students

Abstract

Background: The Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality traits is one of the most comprehensive personality models in modern psychology. The traits, or domains, of the model, provide an extensive framework, which allows researchers to analyse the correlation between the aspects of personality and various aspects of social behaviour. Academic achievement is a key factor in a subject's success, and a more comprehensive understanding of its potential factors could improve educational programs and teaching strategies. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to consider the correlations between the FFM (Big Five) personality traits and the academic achievement of university students in various fields of study. Design: This study has adopted a descriptive analytic approach by exploring previous research data. In the present empirical research, the Big Five factors were measured with the Russian NEO Five-Factor Inventory adaptation by S. Biryukov and M. Bodunov. Academic achievement was defined as the average value of the semester final grades. The Spearman correlation analysis was used for statistical analysis. The sample includes 207 first-and second-year university students in the Linguistics Department. Results: The analysis of the published data revealed that Western psychological studies show that consciousness and openness, two values in the model, are more closely connected with the peculiarities of the students' academic achievement in different fields of study, but similar studies conducted in Russian universities do not fully confirm this data. Findings of our research proved that consciousness is more associated with greater academic achievement of Russian linguistics students in most fields of study compared to the other FFM traits, while other traits showed more specific correlations with particular fields of study. Conclusions: The data suggests that both environmental and internal psychological factors, such as motivation, intelligence, inclinations, abilities, etc. affect academic achievement. However, further research suggests that volitional and cognitive personality traits considered in the framework of various models of personality may have a great influence on academic achievement and should also be taken into consideration. Personality traits, especially consciousness and openness of the FFM, are significant factors of academic achievement. The associations between academic achievement and FFM traits are more prominent in those fields of study that include such features as their relative

Creativity and Personality Traits as Foreign Language Acquisition Predictors in University Linguistics Students

“…The resulting values for each of the five personality factors (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) range from 12 to 60 points [44]. This version of the questionnaire has been well tested on different Russian samples [19,21,45].…”

“…Numerous studies show that openness to experience and especially conscientiousness are significant predictors of academic achievements for most studied subjects, including FL/SL [15][16][17]. Recent Russian research based on the FFM has shown that conscientiousness impacts the academic achievements of Russian university and grade-school students [18][19][20][21]. However, a study of Russian linguistics students' academic achievements in different subjects showed that none of the FFM traits are associated with a student's final grades in English (as the "first" and mandatory FL), while conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism are correlated with the final grades for their "second" elective FL [18].…”

“…In Russian psychology, a large number of FLA studies have been carried out using the System-Functional Model of personality traits developed by Krupnov [22]. Researchers consider sociability, curiosity, persistence, responsibility, and initiative as the FLA factors for different university students [19][20][21][23][24][25]. In particular, it was revealed that persistence is more closely related to success in FLA than curiosity [19,20], and initiative has a contradictory correlation with FLA assessments in linguistics and non-linguistics university students [21,23].…”

“…Researchers consider sociability, curiosity, persistence, responsibility, and initiative as the FLA factors for different university students [19][20][21][23][24][25]. In particular, it was revealed that persistence is more closely related to success in FLA than curiosity [19,20], and initiative has a contradictory correlation with FLA assessments in linguistics and non-linguistics university students [21,23]. These findings are consistent with those of other studies, which showed that students' academic achievements are more strongly associated with conscientiousness than openness [15,16].…”

“…We assume that an explanation of these results may be connected to the following aspects: (1) The complex characteristics of the relationships between creativity and FL proficiency indicators, which may be mediated by other factors, including personality traits; (2) the ambiguous assessment of students' creativity in FL learning by teachers, which corresponds to the assumptions by Shaheen [34]; and (3) the differences in the educational and evaluation systems used by different countries, such as the inconsistencies in the results from studying of personality traits as academic achievement predictors in Russian samples [18][19][20][21]23,24].…”