Abstract
When preparing for exams, students experience various achievement emotions, which are related to their perceived academic control and achievement regarding their exams. These emotions are shaped by a trait-like stable person-specific component and a state-like variable situation-specific component. Furthermore, it is plausible that students' previous emotional experiences might influence their current emotional experiences. Therefore, the present study aimed to disentangle those three components of achievement emotions (namely person, previous-experience, and situation specific components), and to analyze the extent to which these three components relate to perceived academic control and achievement. Using experience sampling, ninety-eight undergraduate students reported their emotions during the final week of exam preparation. Via latent state-trait theory models, including an autoregressive coefficient, our results showed the three expected variance components for enjoyment, anxiety, and anger, with no person-specific variance component for pride. The more stable components (namely person and previous-experience specific components) were significantly associated with perceived academic control and achievement, particularly for negative emotions. Moreover, results suggest a reciprocal relation between anxiety and perceived academic control. Implications for educators seeking to strengthen students' success are discussed.
Highlights
In university settings, the final exam period is typically emotional for undergraduate students
A few prior research studies have already distinguished between trait and state components of achievement emotions and found these components to be quite balanced within achievement emotions (e.g., Nett, Bieg, & Keller, 2017)
The first purpose of the current study focused on the different emotional variance components and aimed to analyze if and how discrete achievement emotions differ proportionally
Summary
The final exam period is typically emotional for undergraduate students. The first study purpose focused on understanding meaningful components of exam-related emotional experiences while preparing for an exam (using the aforementioned example of enjoyment, pride, anxiety, and anger) This could help to conceptualize the relation of emotional experiences with relevant variables, such as students' perception of being in control of their own learning progress, or with academic achievement itself. On a general person-specific trait level, we know that achievement emotions are related to students’ perceived academic control (e.g., Ruthig et al, 2008) and to achievement (e.g., Pekrun, Lichtenfeld, Marsh, Murayama, & Goetz, 2017)
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