Effects of Questionnaire Administration Condition on Children's Achievement-Related Beliefs

Fifth graders' responses to a questionnaire assessing causal attributions, academic expectancies, and self-evaluations of smartness varied as a function of whether the questionnaire was administered individually or in a group. Students with low grade point averages (GPAs) were significantly less likely to attribute their failures to external factors and significantly more likely to attribute their failures to insufficient ability in the individual condition than in the group condition. Students with high GPAs did not give different attributions in the two conditions. Administration condition also influenced children's academic expectancies. Children expressed lower and less accurate grade predictions in the individual condition than in the group condition. Because prior studies vary in terms of questionnaire administration procedures, our results provide a plausible explanation for some inconsistent findings across studies.