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Abstract
This study investigates the effects of contextual and motivational factors as well as, crucially, their interaction in predicting university students’ dropout intentions. We focus on context-related problems in students’ degree program as contextual factors and students’ personal best goals (PB goals) as motivational factors. The sample of this study comprised 432 university students (74.3% female) enrolled in master’s degree programs at Austrian universities. Data was analyzed by means of structural equation modeling and latent moderated structural equation modeling. The results indicated that PB goals were negatively associated with dropout intentions, while context-related problems were positively associated with dropout intentions. In addition, the context-related problems × PB goals interaction effect proved significant and negatively predicted dropout intentions. By showing that the positive relation between context-related problems and dropout intentions can be reversed by increasing PB goals, we provide empirical evidence of the buffering effect of PB goals in the face of context-related problems.
Highlights
Students who drop out of university can experience detrimental economic and psychological consequences of their failure to complete a degree program (e.g., Lundquist et al 2002)
The results of the Confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) for the measurement models for PB goals, context-related problems, and dropout intentions indicated a good level of fit to the data for all scales
We explored the predictive function of context-related problems and PB goals as well as the interaction between structural and individual features
Summary
Students who drop out of university can experience detrimental economic and psychological consequences of their failure to complete a degree program (e.g., Lundquist et al 2002). In research on university dropout, context-related factors, such as institutional support structures, have been widely investigated as potential predictors of student dropout (e.g., Bettinger and Long 2018; Bergman et al 2014; Tinto 2006). Despite the development of integrated models incorporating context-related and individual factors and studies examining both types of dropout predictors (e.g., Tinto 1975, 1987; Georg 2009; Heublein 2014), the question of how individual and context-related factors interact in predicting students’ dropout intentions calls for further exploration. With regard to structural factors, we focus on context-related problems students may experience at university and in their study program (e.g., Lundquist et al 2002). Individual factors are assessed within the motivational framework of personal best goals, i.e., students’ tendency to pursue growth-oriented goals in their degree program (e.g., Martin 2006)
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