Achievement predictors in a secondary students’ sample

In this study several factors that influence academic achievement are going to be presented. 492 students, 190 men and 302 women, with ages from 12 to 18 years old, and from the first and third year of compulsory secondary school and the first year of voluntary secondary school have participated, completing four questionnaires about IQ, motivation, learning strategies, adjustment and study habits. The academic marks selected to be related with the questionnaires we have mentioned before were the Mathematic, Spanish Language and Grammar, English language and Physical Education. We applied the structural equation analysis, by LISREL procedure, to find the best explanatory model about the academic achievement predictors. The results show that the learning strategies and the personal adjustment do not predict the academic performance as much as the intelligence, the motivation and the study habits. Therefore, it is very important to consider these variables as predictors in the works and research, of adolescents’ achievement. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012