Cognitive strategy use and self-regulation as mediators between personality and academic achievement among Chinese undergraduates in Malaysia
Abstract
Background and Purpose: The number of Chinese students studying abroad has increased significantly in recent years. As a result, their academic achievements are rapidly gaining attention. This study aims to look into the relationship between the big five personality traits and academic achievement in Chinese undergraduate students in Malaysia. It also aims to investigate if cognitive strategy use and self-regulation have a mediation effect on these personality traits.
Methodology: The 44-item Five Inventory and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire were used as the instrument. Respondents were picked from year 2 to year 4 at six private universities in Selangor, Malaysia. A total of 430 valid surveys were gathered using stratified random sampling. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used for data analysis.
Findings: Findings showed a significant direct effect of the big five personality traits in terms of agreeableness on academic achievement. The full structural model is valid, reliable and fits well with the data. There is a mediation effect of the cognitive strategy use in the relationship between the big five personality (except extraversion trait) and academic achievement. Additionally, self-regulation mediates conscientiousness and academic achievement, openness to experience traits and academic achievement.
Contributions: This study developed measurement scales for the measurement model and a full structural model based on two mediators.
Keywords: Self-regulated learning strategy, cognitive strategy use, self-regulation, big five personality, academic achievement.
References
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Bentler, P. M. (1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107(2), 238-246.
Bergold, S., & Steinmayr, R. (2018). Personality and intelligence interact in the prediction of academic achievement. Journal of Intelligence, 6(2), 27-45.
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Bratko, D., Chamoro, T., & Saks, Z. (2006). Personality and school performance: Incremental validity of self- and peer-ratings over intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 41(1), 131-142.
Castillo, J. (2017). The relationship between big five personality traits, customer empowerment and customer satisfaction in the retail industry. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research, 11(2), 11-29.
Chomoro, T., & Furnham, A. (2003). Personality predicts academic performance: Evidence from two longitudinal university samples. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(4), 319-338.
Comrey, A. L., & Lee, H. B. (1992). Interpretation and application of factor analytic results. In A. L. Comrey, & H. B. Lee (Eds.), A first course in factor analysis (p. 2). Lawrence Eribaum Associates.
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Individual Differences, 22(4), 439–448.
Forgas, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (2009). Psychology of self-regulation: Cognitive, affective, and motivational processes. Psychology Press.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error: Algebra and statistics. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(3), 382–388.
Garson, G. D. (2013). Hierarchical linear modeling: Guide and applications. Sage.
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Hakimi, S., Hejazi, E., & Lavasani, M. G. (2011). The relationships between personality traits and students’ academic achievement. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 29(1), 836-845.
Hinton, D. E., Pham, T., Tran, M., Safren, S. A., Otto, M. W., & Pollack, M. H. (2004). CBT for Vietnamese refugees with treatment‐resistant PTSD and panic attacks: A pilot study. Journal of Traumatic Stress: Official Publication of The
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Jorskog, K. G., & Sorbom, D. (1989). LISREL 7: A guide to the program and applications. SPSS.
Kappe, R., & Van Der Flier, H. (2010). Using multiple and specific criteria to assess the predictive validity of the big five personality factors on academic performance. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(1), 142-145.
Kline, R. B. (2015). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. Guilford Publications.
Komarraju, M., & Karau, S. J. (2005). The relationship between the big five personality traits and academic motivation. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(2005), 557–567.
Lee, S., Nguyen, H. N., Lee, K. S., Chua, B. L., & Han, H. (2018). Price, people, location, culture and reputation: Determinants of Malaysia as study destination by international hospitality and tourism undergraduates. Journal of Tourism
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Lemaire, P. (2010). Cognitive strategy variations during aging. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(6), 363-369.
Hongyan, L., Jianping, X., Jiyue, C., & Yexin, F. (2015). A reliability meta-analysis for 44 items big five inventory: Based on the reliability generalization methodology. Advances in Psychological Science, 23(5), 755-765.
Lim, A. (2020, June 15). The big five personality traits. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-personality.html
Lounsbury, J. W. Sundstrum, E., Gibson, L. W., & Loveland, J. L (2003). Broad versus narrow personality traits in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Learning and Individual Differences, 14(1), 65-75.
Lundberg, S. (2013). The college type: Personality and educational inequality. Journal of Labour Economics, 31(1), 421–441.
MacCallum, R. C., Widaman, K. F., Zhang, S., & Hong, S. (1999). Sample size in factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 4(1), 84-99.
Martin, J. H., Montgomery, R. L., & Saphian, D. (2006). Personality, achievement test scores, and high school percentile as predictors of academic performance across four years of coursework. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(4),
424-431.
Matthews, G., & Zeidner, M. (2004). Traits, states, and the trilogy of mind: An adaptive perspective on intellectual functioning. In D. Y. Dai & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on
intellectual functioning and development (pp. 143–174). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
McEwen, S. E., Huijbregts, M. P., Ryan, J. D., & Polatajko, H. J. (2009). Cognitive strategy use to enhance motor skill acquisition post-stroke: A critical review. Brain Injury, 23(4), 263-277.
Mueller, R. O., & Hancock, G. R. (2018). Structural equation modeling. Routledge.
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O'Connor, M., & Paunonen, S. V. (2007). Big five personality predictors of post-secondary academic performance. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(5), 971-990.
Ormrod, J. E. (2009). Essentials of educational psychology. Pearson Education Inc.
Ozan, C., Gundogdu, K., Bay, E., & Celkan, H. Y. (2012). A study on the university students’ self-regulated learning strategies skills and self-efficacy perceptions in terms of different variables. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,
46(1), 1806-1811.
Pardo, A., Han, F., & Ellis, R. A. (2016). Combining university student self-regulated learning indicators and engagement with online learning events to predict academic performance. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 10(1),
82-92.
Phakiti, A. (2003). A closer look at the relationship of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use to EFL reading achievement test performance. Language Testing 20(1), 26-56.
Pintrich, P. R. (2004). A conceptual framework for assessing motivation and self-regulated learning in college students. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 385-407.
Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 33–40.
Rosito, A. C. (2020). The big five personality traits, self-regulated learning, and academic achievement. In The 3rd International Conference on Psychology in Health, Education, and Organizational Setting (ICP-HESOS 2018)-Improving
Mental Health and Harmony in Global Community (pp. 469-477). Science and Technology Publications.
Schunk, D. H. (2005). Self-regulated learning: The educational legacy of Paul R. Pintrich. Educational Psychologist, 40(1), 85-94.
Siegler, R. S., & Shipley, C. (1995). Variation, selection, and cognitive change. In T. Simon & G. Halford (Eds.), Developing cognitive competence: New approaches to process modeling (pp. 31–76). Erlbaum.
Sorić, I., Penezić, Z., & Burić, I. (2017). The big five personality traits, goal orientations, and academic achievement. Learning and Individual Differences, 54(1), 126-134.
Srivastava, S. (2013). Measuring the big five personality factors. http://psdlab.uoregon.edu/bigfive.html.
Statista. (2019). Number of international students in Malaysia 2017 by country of origin. https://www.statista.com/statistics/866731/international-students-in-malaysia-by-country-of-origin/
Steinmayr, R., Meiǹer, A., Weideinger, A. F., & Wirthwein, L. (2014). Academic achievement. Oxford University Press.
Stoffa, R., Kush, J. C., & Heo, M. (2011). Using the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire and the strategy inventory for language learning in assessing motivation and learning strategies of generation 1.5 Korean immigrant
students. Education Research International, 2011(1), 1-8.
Winzer, M. (2008). Children with exceptionalities in Canadian classrooms. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Sharma, Y. (2020, December 2). Private universities at risk as foreign students stay away. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2020120216283461
Zakaria, R., Satari, S. Z., Damahuri, N. A., & Khairuddin, R. (2019). Descriptive analysis of students’ CGPA: A case study of Universiti Malaysia Pahang. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 469(1), 1-8.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64-70.
Bandalos, D. L. (2014). Relative performance of categorical diagonally weighted least squares and robust maximum likelihood estimation. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 21(1), 102-116.
Bentler, P. M. (1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107(2), 238-246.
Bergold, S., & Steinmayr, R. (2018). Personality and intelligence interact in the prediction of academic achievement. Journal of Intelligence, 6(2), 27-45.
Bidjerano, T., & Dai, D. Y. (2007). The relationship between the big-five model of personality and self-regulated learning strategies. Learning and Individual Differences, 17(1), 69-81.
Bratko, D., Chamoro, T., & Saks, Z. (2006). Personality and school performance: Incremental validity of self- and peer-ratings over intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 41(1), 131-142.
Castillo, J. (2017). The relationship between big five personality traits, customer empowerment and customer satisfaction in the retail industry. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research, 11(2), 11-29.
Chomoro, T., & Furnham, A. (2003). Personality predicts academic performance: Evidence from two longitudinal university samples. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(4), 319-338.
Comrey, A. L., & Lee, H. B. (1992). Interpretation and application of factor analytic results. In A. L. Comrey, & H. B. Lee (Eds.), A first course in factor analysis (p. 2). Lawrence Eribaum Associates.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO five-factor inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
De Feyter, T., Caers, R., Vigna, C., & Berings, D. (2012). Unraveling the impact of the big five personality traits on academic performance: The moderating and mediating effects of self-efficacy and academic motivation. Learning and
Individual Differences, 22(4), 439–448.
Forgas, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (2009). Psychology of self-regulation: Cognitive, affective, and motivational processes. Psychology Press.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error: Algebra and statistics. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(3), 382–388.
Garson, G. D. (2013). Hierarchical linear modeling: Guide and applications. Sage.
Grohol, J. M. (2019, May 30). The big five personality traits. Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-big-five-personality-traits
Hakimi, S., Hejazi, E., & Lavasani, M. G. (2011). The relationships between personality traits and students’ academic achievement. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 29(1), 836-845.
Hinton, D. E., Pham, T., Tran, M., Safren, S. A., Otto, M. W., & Pollack, M. H. (2004). CBT for Vietnamese refugees with treatment‐resistant PTSD and panic attacks: A pilot study. Journal of Traumatic Stress: Official Publication of The
International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, 17(5), 429-433.
Hirschmann, R. (2020, November 23). Number of international students studying in higher education institutes in Malaysia in 2019, by country of origin. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/866731/international-students-in-
malaysia-by-country-of-origin/
Icef Monitor Editor. (2023). Malaysia exceeds target for new international student applications in 2022. https://monitor.icef.com/2023/02/malaysia-exceeds-target-for-new-international-student-applications-in-2022/
Ilker, E. (2014). A validity and reliability study of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice,14(3), 829-833.
John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 102–138). Guilford Press.
Jorskog, K. G., & Sorbom, D. (1989). LISREL 7: A guide to the program and applications. SPSS.
Kappe, R., & Van Der Flier, H. (2010). Using multiple and specific criteria to assess the predictive validity of the big five personality factors on academic performance. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(1), 142-145.
Kline, R. B. (2015). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. Guilford Publications.
Komarraju, M., & Karau, S. J. (2005). The relationship between the big five personality traits and academic motivation. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(2005), 557–567.
Lee, S., Nguyen, H. N., Lee, K. S., Chua, B. L., & Han, H. (2018). Price, people, location, culture and reputation: Determinants of Malaysia as study destination by international hospitality and tourism undergraduates. Journal of Tourism
and Cultural Change, 16(4), 335-347.
Lemaire, P. (2010). Cognitive strategy variations during aging. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(6), 363-369.
Hongyan, L., Jianping, X., Jiyue, C., & Yexin, F. (2015). A reliability meta-analysis for 44 items big five inventory: Based on the reliability generalization methodology. Advances in Psychological Science, 23(5), 755-765.
Lim, A. (2020, June 15). The big five personality traits. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-personality.html
Lounsbury, J. W. Sundstrum, E., Gibson, L. W., & Loveland, J. L (2003). Broad versus narrow personality traits in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Learning and Individual Differences, 14(1), 65-75.
Lundberg, S. (2013). The college type: Personality and educational inequality. Journal of Labour Economics, 31(1), 421–441.
MacCallum, R. C., Widaman, K. F., Zhang, S., & Hong, S. (1999). Sample size in factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 4(1), 84-99.
Martin, J. H., Montgomery, R. L., & Saphian, D. (2006). Personality, achievement test scores, and high school percentile as predictors of academic performance across four years of coursework. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(4),
424-431.
Matthews, G., & Zeidner, M. (2004). Traits, states, and the trilogy of mind: An adaptive perspective on intellectual functioning. In D. Y. Dai & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on
intellectual functioning and development (pp. 143–174). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
McEwen, S. E., Huijbregts, M. P., Ryan, J. D., & Polatajko, H. J. (2009). Cognitive strategy use to enhance motor skill acquisition post-stroke: A critical review. Brain Injury, 23(4), 263-277.
Mueller, R. O., & Hancock, G. R. (2018). Structural equation modeling. Routledge.
Munusamy, M. M., & Hashim, A. (2019). Internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia: Insights from higher education administrators. AEI Insights, 5(1), 21-39.
Mitchell, N. (2018, January 26). Global universities unprepared for sea change ahead. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20180126131034717
O'Connor, M., & Paunonen, S. V. (2007). Big five personality predictors of post-secondary academic performance. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(5), 971-990.
Ormrod, J. E. (2009). Essentials of educational psychology. Pearson Education Inc.
Ozan, C., Gundogdu, K., Bay, E., & Celkan, H. Y. (2012). A study on the university students’ self-regulated learning strategies skills and self-efficacy perceptions in terms of different variables. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,
46(1), 1806-1811.
Pardo, A., Han, F., & Ellis, R. A. (2016). Combining university student self-regulated learning indicators and engagement with online learning events to predict academic performance. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 10(1),
82-92.
Phakiti, A. (2003). A closer look at the relationship of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use to EFL reading achievement test performance. Language Testing 20(1), 26-56.
Pintrich, P. R. (2004). A conceptual framework for assessing motivation and self-regulated learning in college students. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 385-407.
Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 33–40.
Rosito, A. C. (2020). The big five personality traits, self-regulated learning, and academic achievement. In The 3rd International Conference on Psychology in Health, Education, and Organizational Setting (ICP-HESOS 2018)-Improving
Mental Health and Harmony in Global Community (pp. 469-477). Science and Technology Publications.
Schunk, D. H. (2005). Self-regulated learning: The educational legacy of Paul R. Pintrich. Educational Psychologist, 40(1), 85-94.
Siegler, R. S., & Shipley, C. (1995). Variation, selection, and cognitive change. In T. Simon & G. Halford (Eds.), Developing cognitive competence: New approaches to process modeling (pp. 31–76). Erlbaum.
Sorić, I., Penezić, Z., & Burić, I. (2017). The big five personality traits, goal orientations, and academic achievement. Learning and Individual Differences, 54(1), 126-134.
Srivastava, S. (2013). Measuring the big five personality factors. http://psdlab.uoregon.edu/bigfive.html.
Statista. (2019). Number of international students in Malaysia 2017 by country of origin. https://www.statista.com/statistics/866731/international-students-in-malaysia-by-country-of-origin/
Steinmayr, R., Meiǹer, A., Weideinger, A. F., & Wirthwein, L. (2014). Academic achievement. Oxford University Press.
Stoffa, R., Kush, J. C., & Heo, M. (2011). Using the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire and the strategy inventory for language learning in assessing motivation and learning strategies of generation 1.5 Korean immigrant
students. Education Research International, 2011(1), 1-8.
Winzer, M. (2008). Children with exceptionalities in Canadian classrooms. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Sharma, Y. (2020, December 2). Private universities at risk as foreign students stay away. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2020120216283461
Zakaria, R., Satari, S. Z., Damahuri, N. A., & Khairuddin, R. (2019). Descriptive analysis of students’ CGPA: A case study of Universiti Malaysia Pahang. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 469(1), 1-8.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64-70.
Published
2024-02-29
How to Cite
Ma, Y., & Ishak, Z. (2024). Cognitive strategy use and self-regulation as mediators between personality and academic achievement among Chinese undergraduates in Malaysia. Journal of Nusantara Studies (JONUS), 9(1), 245-268. https://doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol9iss1pp245-268
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Articles
