The relationship of psychological capital (hope, optimism, resiliency and self-efficacy) with the achievement goals and academic performance of the first-year students

The purpose of this study was analyzing the relationships of psychological capital (PsyCap) with achievement goals and academic performance of the first-year university students of Islamic Azad University in Masjed Soleiman and Ahwaz branches. The participants were consisted of 520 students (262 males and 258 females) who were selected by using the stratified random sampling method. The used instruments in the present study were consisted of Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (ADSH)، Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R)، Resiliency Scale (RS)، and Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES) in order to assess each of the four factors of making up psychological capital. The Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) and Andrew Achievement Goals Scale were used to measure the achievement goals. The average of student''s final scores in that semester was used to measure the academic performance. For analyzing the data، the confirmatory factor analysis، Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression methods were applied. The results showed that psychological capital and its four components with mastery-approach and performance-approach goals، and also academic performance had a meaningful positive relationship. Moreover، psychological capital and its four components had negative relationship with performance avoidance goal. Achievement goals had meaningful relationship with academic performance as well. In addition، the combination of the four variables of hope، optimism، resiliency and self-efficacy with respect to higher order construction of psychological capital can predict the mastery- approach goal and academic performance of the students more effectively.