Cognitive and affective factors affecting academic performance of DLSU engineering students (SY 1994-1995)

• Main Author: Salvador, Floro Mayo F.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1996
• Subjects: Cognitive styles; Academic performance; Engineering students; De La Salle University > Students; Intellect; Learning; Psychology of; Counseling; Educational Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/1755
• Institution: De La Salle University

This descriptive-correlational and predictive research investigates and explains academic performance of engineering students and some selected cognitive and affective factors. This study also determines the specific cognitive and affective factors that best predict the academic performance of engineering students. The cognitive factors used were four learning styles measured by the Learning Style Inventory of KOlb (1981). Kolb's cognitive factors were: accommodators, divergers, convergers, and assimilators. The other cognitive factors measured were: intelligence, English aptitude (language usage, comprehension, reading), and Math aptitude (math A, math B, algebra). The latter set of cognitive factors were 16 academic motivators measured by the College Entrance Test (CET) of De La Salle University. The affective factors were the 16 academic motivators measured by the Academic Motivation Inventory of Moen and Doyle (1984).Respondents were selected via stratified random sampling using proportional allocation procedure. Data gathering was done during the second and third terms of SY 1994-1995.Statistical tools utilized for analysis of data were one-way analysis of variance using pair-wise comparison, Pearson r, and multiple correlation using stepwise procedure. The study found out that achieving motive, among the 16 academic motivators, was the best predictor of the academic performance of the second, third, fourth, and terminal year engineering students. Achieving motive was also the best predictor of the academic performance of all the respondents taken as a whole. Math B scores were the only predictor among the cognitive factors treated as predictor variables of the academic performance of first year engineering students and Math A scores were second best predictor. Math B Subset scores of the CET were the best predictor of the academic performance of fourth year engineering students. Intelligence was the second best predictor.The study concluded that learning style, as a cognitive factor, influenced the academic performance of engineering students in varying degrees. Its influences on the academic performance of first, fourth, and terminal year engineering students were due to the fact that not one of the learning styles was superior to the rest. Its influences on the academic performance of second, third, and fourth years were seen in the form of significant differences in the cumulative grade point average (CGPA) brought about by learning style differences. The other cognitive factors, namely, intelligence, English aptitude, and Math aptitude affect the academic performance of engineering students in different capacities at different year levels.