The Role of Personality in Predicting (Change in) Students' Academic Success Across Four Years of Secondary School

Little longitudinal research has addressed the question of whether the Big Five personality traits (i.e., O, C, E, A, N) predict educational outcomes and whether the Big Five provide incremental predictive validity for educational outcomes when prior achievement, intelligence, and academic self-concept are controlled for. Also, little is known about whether noncognitive factors are related to change in academic success, especially grades, after controlling for its stability. To address these research questions, we used data from the Luxembourg longitudinal extension of the 2009 cycle of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). We included data from two student cohorts that were followed across 4 years: The first cohort was in ninth grade when they participated in PISA (N = 240); the second cohort in 10th grade (N = 276). Correlational results showed that Conscientiousness and Openness were substantially related to subject-specific grades in Mathematics, French, and German across several school years. There was evidence for incremental predictive validity beyond intelligence and academic self-concepts. When controlling for the stability of grades, there were only small effects of all predictors on later grades. In summary, students' personality (but also intelligence and academic self-concepts) predicted the stable part of grades rather than change.