The Relationship between Perfectionism, Achievement Motivation, Self-Esteem, and Academic Performance among Nursing Students

Academic performance is the most important factor in student evaluation. Self-esteem is related to self-satisfaction and perfectionism is the setting of high goals in performance. Achievement motivation is the willingness to gain success. Because these variables can affect academic performance, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between students ' perfectionism, achievement motivation, self-esteem, and academic performance. This was a correlational-descriptive study. Based on Morgan ' s table, 97 students were randomly selected from all last year nursing students of Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University. Due to being incomplete 7 questionnaires were excluded. The data collection tools consisted of Ahvaz Perfectionism Scale (APS), Hermans Achievement Motivation (HAMQ) Scale, and the Coppersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI). Total average scores of students were considered as academic performance. Results showed a positive significant correlation between academic performance and perfectionism, achievement motivation, and self-esteem (P < 0.05). Perfectionism, achievement motivation, and self-esteem predicted 31% variances in academic performance. Nevertheless, investigation of the liner correlation of these variables showed that only the correlation between achievement motivation and academic performance was meaningful. It is seems that for the improvement of students ' academic achievement, perfectionism, self-esteem, and especially achievement motivation must be taken into consideration.