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Academic self-handicapping : prevalence and its impact on engagement with academic supports in a tertiary environment

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posted on 2023-05-27, 12:08 authored by Chakouch, KL
Self-handicapping has been documented to have strong positive correlations with disengagement from learning, poor adjustment, and academic underachievement. The present longitudinal study investigated changes in self-handicapping strategies in response to evaluative threat and changes to study load during university students' first semester study, and its impact on engagement with academic supports. The hypothesis indicating that self-handicapping behaviour would change over time was not supported, however participants who reported low protective factors associated with poor academic achievement scored higher on self-handicapping measures than those whose scores reflected high protective factors associated with academic achievement. As expected, high self-handicappers invested less time in personal study but only for core units associated with meeting the requirements to completing one's degree. No significant differences between high and low self-handicappers were observed with engagement with support programs, however the direction of these means were counterintuitive to those originally hypothesised with high self-handicappers attending more Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) core to their degree than low self-handicappers. It was concluded that self-handicapping strategies were stable within a semester of study, with evidence that university resources should be directed towards supports and interventions implemented early within the first semester of study.

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