Impact of Non-Cognitive Factors on First-Year Performance

This research paper describes the study of non-cognitive factors and their impact on student academic outcomes, above and beyond the impact from previous academic performance. The connection between prior academic performance factors, such as high school GPA and standardized test scores, and the performance of first year students (as measured by GPA) has been well established. While it has been shown that typically 20%-25% of the variation in first year student performance can be explained by a combination of high school GPA and standardized test scores, this still leaves over half of the variation unaccounted for. Some of this variation may be accounted for by a collection of non-cognitive factors. A non-cognitive inventory was created using the 10-Item Big Five Survey, the Short Grit Survey, and two subscales from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Test Anxiety and Time and Study Environment). Data was collected using this survey from freshman through senior engineering students at a large, public research-intensive university in the Midwest. Using a hierarchical multiple regression, students’ first year grades were regressed onto their previous academic performance as well as their scores in the non-cognitive inventory. Initial results indicate that the inclusion of non-cognitive factors alongside previous academic performance improved the predictability of students’ first year GPA by an additional 7 percentage points compared to a model that only included previous performance. This paper also explores the variations in impact of non-cognitive factors on performance for different classroom settings. A series of multiple regressions illuminates distinct differences in the non-cognitive factors that most strongly affect academic performance in technical lecture, technical team, and liberal arts courses. Implications for student support in those different classroom contexts are described.