A Study of the Relationships between Cognitive styles, Personality Traits and Academic Achievement

According to previous researches, some factors affect academic achievement such as cognitive styles and personality traits. The present study investigated the relationship between these factors with academic achievement among the students. This is an observational study with correlational design which carried out on 175 students (105 female, 70 male) at the college of Health and the college of Nursing in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Participants completed the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), the Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT), and reported their college grade point average (GPA). Stepwise regression was applied to study the relationship and to predict quantity of aforementioned variables, meanwhile for comparing males and females in research variables; Multivariate analysis of variance and T-tests were used. A correlation analysis revealed an interesting pattern of significant relationships between cognitive styles and personality traits with academic achievement (P<0.001). Stepwise regression analyses indicated that cognitive styles and personality traits explained 50% of the variance in academic achievement. The most powerful predictor in academic achievement was conscientiousness that can predict 39% variance of academic achievement. Cognitive styles also explained 1.2% of the variance in academic achievement. The result of this research showed that there is no significant deference between research variables in genders. There were no significant differences between two sexes in cognitive styles. Our sample of boys and girls in the view of knowledge, methods and learning styles were not significantly different. And we can conclude that parenting style, personality, intelligence and cognitive abilities, and cognitive styles are all Effective factors on cognitive styles and so, gender cannot solely be explained as an important factor.