Temporal comparison effects on students’ academic self-concepts: An investigation of different comparison periods in the 2I/E model with weighted achievement levels

Recent research has increasingly discussed the importance of temporal comparisons (comparisons with previous achievements) for the formation of students’ academic self-concepts, in addition to social comparisons (comparisons with others’ achievements) and dimensional comparisons (comparisons with achievements in other subjects). However, empirical findings on temporal comparison effects are inconsistent. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by arguing that temporal comparison effects were overestimated in previous studies testing the 2I/E model—a model that has often been used to investigate the joint effects of social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons in recent years—due to an inappropriate specification of social and dimensional comparison effects. Moreover, we examine the potential impact of comparison periods on the strength of temporal comparison effects. Specifically, we developed an extension of the 2I/E model in which we calculated students’ achievement levels (used to specify social and dimensional comparison effects) by weighting rather than averaging students’ grades from earlier school years. Subsequently, we tested this 2I/E model extension, together with two alternative models, in a sample of 1,006 tenth-graders from Germany by examining social, dimensional, and temporal comparison effects, relating to periods from 0.5 to 2.0 years, on students’ math and German self-concepts. Overall, we found evidence for our assumption that temporal comparisons were overestimated in previous 2I/E model studies. Nevertheless, we still found significant temporal comparison effects in our 2I/E model extension. The periods for which the temporal comparison effects became significant differed between math and German. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)