Predicting Academic Achievement Based on Academic Responsibility Mediated by the Sense of Belonging to School in Male Students

Academic achievement is among the main criteria for students' abilities to complete their education. Among the variables that can be related to students' academic achievement are the responsibility and a sense of belonging to the school. A sense of responsibility is a personality trait that arises during the healthy development of individuals, which includes accepting circumstances, being accountable, and taking on the tasks required of the individual. Having a sense of belonging to school contributes to the students' academic progress. Active participation in school activities affects students' learning as well as their motivation. A low sense of belonging to school leads to academic failure and eventually dropout. Therefore, the current study aimed to explain a model of academic achievement based on the direct role of academic responsibility mediated by the sense of school belonging in 10th–grade male students.

This was a descriptive and correlational study. The statistical population of this study included all male primary school students in 10 districts of Qazvin City, Iran, in the academic year of 2019–2020 (N=738). In correlational studies, 30 samples are required per variable. Considering that we explored 3 variables in the present study, 90 subjects were sufficient. To prevent sample loss and for sample representativeness, the sample size of 200 individuals was selected by the multistage cluster random sampling method. The inclusion criteria of the study were being tenth–grade male students of the second district of Qazvin and answering all the questions of the questionnaires. The exclusion criterion of the study was providing incomplete questionnaires. The Sense of Belonging to School Questionnaire (Brew et al., 2004), California Psychology Inventory (subscale of responsibility) (Gough, 1951), and Academic Achievement Questionnaire (Saatchi, 2010) were used to collect the necessary information. Data analysis was performed by Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equations in AMOS and SPSS. A significance level of 0.05 was used for all statistical tests.

The obtained results indicated that the effect of total responsibility on academic achievement was positive and significant (β=0.308, p=0.001). Additionally, the direct effect of responsibility on the sense of belonging to school (β=0.134, p=0.014), the direct effect of responsibility on academic achievement (β=0.215, p=0.004), and the direct effect of sense of belonging on school concerning academic achievement (β=0.38, p=0.001) were positive and significant. Furthermore, responsibility presented a significant and positive indirect effect on academic achievement with the mediating role of belonging to school (β=0.093, p=0.031). The proposed research model had a good fit based on various indicators (RMSEA=0.06, GFI=0.914, CFI=0.952, TLI=0.961, X2/df=2.2).

Based on the obtained findings, various factors, including academic responsibility and a sense of belonging to the school, explain academic achievement; therefore, parents, teachers, and educators can take special care to grow and nurture them.