The predictive role of personality traits on academic performance of medical students: The mediating role of self-efficacy.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Hayat, Ali Asghar Kohoulat, Naeimeh Amini, Mitra Faghihi, Seyed Ali Akbar
Copyright Year	2020
Abstract	Background: Determining the variables influencing students’ academic performance is one of the main preoccupations in medical colleges. Therefore, this study examined the effect of the Big Five personality traits on medical students’ academic performance, considering the mediating role of self-efficacy.Methods: We applied a cross sectional research design using a PLS-SEM approach. A total of 249 medical students participated in this study. Two valid and reliable questionnaires, including Big Five Inventory (BFI-10) and New General Self Efficacy (GSE) were used. Data were analyzed using both SPSS 18 and PLS2 software.Results: The validity and reliability of the questionnaires were confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. The results revealed that openness (β= 0.16, p<0.001), conscientiousness (β=0.22, p<0.001), agreeableness (β=0.19, p<0.001), and self-efficacy (β=0.24, p<0.001) had a significant positive and direct effect on academic performance. Neuroticism (β=-0.21, p<0.001) had a significant negative and direct effect on academic performance. Also, openness (β=0.47, p<0.001) and conscientiousness (β=0.33, p<0.001) had a direct positive effect on self-efficacy. Neuroticism (β=-0.15, p<0.001) had a direct negative effect on self-efficacy. Moreover, the results showed an indirect positive effect of conscientiousness (β=0.08, p<0.001) and openness (β=0.11, p<0.001) on academic performance through self-efficacy. In addition, the results showed that neuroticism (β=-0.03, p<0.001) had an indirect negative effect on academic performance through self-efficacy.Conclusion: This study discovered the relationships between personality traits, self-efficacy, and academic performance of medical students. The results showed that individual differences in personality traits directly and indirectly play an essential role, through self-efficacy, in contributing to the students’ academic performance.
Page Count	7
ISSN	10161430
Journal	Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Volume Number	34
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7711051
PubMed reference number	33306067
e-ISSN	22516840
DOI	10.34171/mjiri.34.77
Language	English
Publisher	Iran University of Medical Sciences
Publisher Date	2020-07-11
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 License (CC BY-NC-SA 1.0), which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works for non-commercial purposes from the material, as long as the author of the original work is cited properly. © 2020 Iran University of Medical Sciences
Subject Keyword	Personality Self-efficacy Performance Medical student
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Medicine