Essay Example on Cumulative Grade Point Average

In our daily life academic achievement is commonly used to represent the results that a student has achieved in his or her studies including cumulative Grade Point Average GPA awarded educational degrees and professional certification and so on According to the definition summarized by the Psychology Dictionary Organization 2013 academic achievement refers to educational accomplishments through learning and training in places like schools and higher educational institutions Also it is usually measured and evaluated by examinations and assessments such as standardized tests and performance assessments While Annie Howard and Mildred 2006 figured out that there isn t any general agreement concerning on how academic achievement should be best assessed In fact many factors could affect individual academic achievement including individual differences in intelligence and personality cognitive factors motivation self control and so on Sophie Benedikt and Tomas 2011 In this essay however it mainly focuses on using recent research evidence to discuss the correlation between academic achievement and personality from various points In terms of academic achievement or performance both the theoretical and practical values of academic achievement should be considered as the importance of it 

Except its theoretical value its practical value could not be neglected because of its high validity for both society and individual Based on the statistic of OECD which is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development educational setting contributes to the domestic products of the member countries of OECD in a certain extent Normally GPA is the most common use in measuring academic achievement despite of some doubts existed The validity of measure of GPA is doubtful in a reason of its temporal stability Funder 2001 however suggested that the reliability and stability of it is high across a long time In terms of personality there are a variety of approaches to measure it including the most two general taxonomies HEXACO the five factor model Among them the dimensions of the five factor model FFM involves in five basic units extraversion neuroticism conscientiousness agreeableness and openness Besides each of the five dimensions can be divided into more specific levels in which shows different characteristics p3 For example neuroticism refers to emotion control and extraversion relate to the degree of sociability Back to last century Norman 1963 indicated that the five factor model showed the trait dimensions step by step which contributes to its high credibility validity and robustness As a result it is applied into a series of researches over the years History In this paragraph it pays much attention on exploring the correlation between academic performance and personality through analysing recent research 

According to Heaven Ciarrochi and Vialle 2007 they noticed that the recent research related to academic performance and personality put more emphasizes on the Big Five personality traits and Eysenck s three dimensions But there still has many resource and scientific research demonstrate that academic performance is no longer only correlated with the five factors of personality like agreeableness openness and extraversion but it is also correlated with traits such as self esteem or the level of personality organizations in activities which is similar to the conscientiousness of Big Five personality traits Furnham Chamorro Premuzic and McDougall 2003 Also Lesson Ciarrochi and Heaven 2008 agreed that individual differences in personality relate to his or her academic performance by Besides Seyedeh Shima Mohad 2012 organized 146 postgraduate international students through analysing their cumulative GPA to reveal that personality traits are largely correlated with academic performance At the same time Iulia and Florentina 2012 agreed that self esteem would help people to gain high academic performance In turn a low self esteem would influence academic performance negatively Besides Joshi and Srivastava 2009 figured out that a low level of self esteem goes against academic results There are several specific previous researches showed below to illustrate the link between them in a further analysis and expansion 

Specifically Iulia and Florentina 2012 attempt to measure Neuroticism Extraversion and Psychoticism depending on EPQ method which is a questionnaire for assessing personality Meanwhile they also use the methods of MBTI and Rosenberg s Self Esteem Scale Iulia and Florentina evaluate academic performance based on the grading of the final project and overall performance in the previous academic year In table 1 it will illustrate that its specific grading information Table 1 relationships between academic performance and neuroticism extraversion and psychoticism Final Grading Overall Grading of Previous Year Neuroticism 0 738 0 445 Extraversion 0 214 0 038 Psychoticism 0 358 0 314 Therefore the above data demonstrates that both neuroticism and psychoticism are negatively correlated with academic performance and extraversion still illustrates that it has a weak influence on academic performance 2 factors leaning style and academic motivation Admittedly the above paragraph explains the positive relationships between Moreover Asghar Ali Sayed 2011 noticed that personality has effects on both academic motivation and academic performance depending on the results of completing personality questionnaire and academic motivation questionnaire by some college voluntary students