There was an early study(Zhang, Gan, & Cham, 2007) saying that evaluative concerns perfectionism has a negative impact on academic engagement for university students, while there was a limitation of research if any psychological factors about evaluati...
There was an early study(Zhang, Gan, & Cham, 2007) saying that evaluative concerns perfectionism has a negative impact on academic engagement for university students, while there was a limitation of research if any psychological factors about evaluative concerns perfectionism leads to difficulties in academic engagement. This study wanted to broaden the understanding about the relationship with evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement by looking into it through validation from others and self. Validation from others means a desire to obtain confirmation from others, consisting of approval motivation and fear of negative evaluation from others(Wei & Mallinckrodt, 2005). Validation from self means a self-reinforcement ability which enables himself to continue doing something by validating and encouraging himself. As validation from others and self showed in an early study(Deci & Ryan, 1991; Reschly & Mittman, 1973; Wu & Wei, 2008) the meaningful relation between evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement based on motivation and self-reinforcement, this study could make a hypothesis that validation from others and self would mediate the relation between evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement and examined it.
This study targeting 509 female university students now attending universities used a structural equation model(SEM) for verification of models according to the hypothesis.
The result of this study is as follows.
Firstly, the higher the evaluative concerns perfectionism is, the higher the valuation from others is. Moreover, validation from others having meaningful passive relation with evaluative concerns perfectionism showed that it is in inverse proportion to academic engagement. Therefore, validation from others supported the hypothesis of this study predicting that validation from others would play a negative mediating role in the relation between evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement.
Secondly, the higher the evaluative concerns perfectionism is, the lower the ability of self-reinforcement. Validation from self became a reason to have a positive effect on academic engagement by showing meaningful passive relation with it. In addition, through evaluation of mediating effect, its effect of validation of self was proved in the relationship between evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement. These results can be seen as supporting the hypothesis of this study which predicted that validation from self would play a positive mediating role in relationship with evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement.
Lastly, validation from others and self used as parameters was in inverse proportion each other, which showed the same result as previous study(Wei & Mallinckrodt, 2005; Wu & Wei, 2008). The relation between validation of others and two sub-factors, approval motivation and fear of negative evaluation from others, showed passive relation in high level, which proved that it is measuring validation, the same construct. Also, it was in inverse proportion to validation from self measured with self-reinforcement ability and showed a significant relationships.
This study showed that validation from others and self partly mediate the relation between evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement as a result of evaluation of mediating effect.
This study suggested the importance of validation from others and self in the effect of evaluative concerns perfectionism of female university students on schoolwork. Further study will be needed for the relationship with other psychological factors about the relation between evaluative concerns perfectionism and academic engagement.