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| Author(s): |
Marilia Nascimento
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2016-04-26 |
| Examining board members: |
Gilberto de Andrade Martins;
Evely Boruchovitch;
Maria Regina Maluf;
Ronaldo Pilati Rodrigues
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| Advisor: | Gilberto de Andrade Martins; Maria Regina Maluf |
| Abstract | |
The perception about causes of events is part of daily life. Causes are attributed to events in order to be able to make previsions, and control and change future outcomes. Questions like \"why didn\'t I pass the test?\" and \"Why was I the first place in the entrance exam?\" lead to perception of an explanatory cause for failure or success. The Theory of Causal Attribution has been examined to understand and explain how people interpret their success\' or failure\'s determinants in performance situations. The perceived causes will be related to the each individual\'s perception about the event, which does not imply real causality, given that the action takes place according to each individual\'s own perception about the event. The theoretical approach used in this research was the Theory of Causal Attribution, proposed by Bernard Weiner, in the educational context, focusing on causal attributions for academic success and failure. In this context, the main objective of this research was to identify the causes perceived as explanatory of Accounting students\' academic performance. The research also sought to obtain evidence and support to the discussion about the relationship among academic success and failure, the modality of education, self-esteem and students\' profile. The data were collected through a questionnaire administered to Accounting students of two Public Universities offering the Accounting major in two modalities of education (traditional and e-learning), and 738 valid answers were obtained to the analysis. The questionnaire was structured into three parts (I - performance and perceived causes, II - self-esteem measurement and III - students\' profile). The results showed a profile where students are 27.4 years old on average (34.27 in the e-learning modality and 24.87 in the traditional modality). Most students (83%) were working (90% in the e-learning and 80% in the traditional modality) and most respondents (62% in the e-learning and 58% in the traditional modality) were women. The internal causes, specifically effort and ability, were highlighted as explanatory factors for the academic success and the external causes, specifically task difficulty, schedule flexibility and the teacher\'s negative influence, were highlighted as explanatory factors for the academic failure. Since the results show that students often indicate their own ability to explain their success, this indicates a manifestation of the self-serving bias, which contributes to maintaining the self-esteem in the face of motivation\'s positive influence. Among the causes of success, the ability was associated with a higher level of self-esteem and luck was associated with a lower level of self-esteem. Among the causes of failure, the tasks\' difficulty was associated to the lower level of self-esteem. A general analysis allows observing that students spend little time studying, mainly attribute success to themselves and failure to others, and have a high self-esteem mainly associated to the success attributed to capacity. As future researches, pilot studies are recommended in order to set other causal attributions for developing new data collection instruments, through a qualitative approach, that can expand the findings and contribute to the literature. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 14/10194-0 - Attribution of causality to the academic performance and self-esteem in students of accounting |
| Grantee: | Marília Nascimento |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |