Personal project appraisals, academic achievement and related satisfaction: A prospective study

Abstract

The impact of achievement project appraisals on academic achievement, satisfaction and test anxiety, as well as on subsequent project appraisals, was examined. First, 303 university students filled in the Little’s Personal Project Analysis (PPA) at the beginning of their studies. Six months later, 170 of them were examined according to their anxiety, and expected and received grades in an examination situation. One year after the first measurement, they filled in an academic satisfaction scale, and two years later, the PPA. Data on academic achievement was gathered from university archives. The results: analysed by structural equation models (SEM), showed that those who appraised their achievement projects in positive terms and as easy to achieve had higher levels of academic achievement and related satisfaction than those who appraised achievement projects as stressful and non-attainable. In turn, the more satisfied they were with their achievements, the more they appraised their achievement projects as easy to achieve two years later. Furthermore, the more the subjects appraised their achievement projects in negative terms, the more anxiety they reported before the examination.