General Personality Traits and College Adjustment in Relation to Academic Achievement and Engineering Identity
Abstract
This study seeks to examine whether and to what extent general personality traits based on the Big Five model (McCrae & Costa, 2003) and students’ adjustment to college as measured by the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1999) correlate with and explain unique variance of academic achievement and engineering identity among undergraduate engineering students. Correlational analysis revealed moderate positive relationships between engineering identity and academic, social, personal-emotional, and institutional adjustment as well as small positive relationships between engineering identity and personality traits of Extroversion and Conscientiousness. College adjustment explained 10% of the variance in academic achievement and 17% of the variance in engineering identity scores, whereas personality traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion explained 2% of the variance in GPA. The purpose of the present study is to help college engineering students to develop a comprehensive understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, critical for their personal and professional development as engineers.
Subject Area
Engineering|Personality psychology|Vocational education
Recommended Citation
Reder, Alexandra, "General Personality Traits and College Adjustment in Relation to Academic Achievement and Engineering Identity" (2023). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI29065113.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI29065113
