Academic attributional style, self-efficacy and gender: A cross-cultural comparison

The relationships between academic attributional style (AAS), self-efficacy, gender and culture were investigated in this study. Three research questions “Is AAS influenced by self-efficacy, gender and culture?”, “Does AAS operate in the same way in two different cultures?”, and “How do AAS dimensions (internality, stability, globality) vary?” were examined with a sample of 261 university students studying in Turkey and Britain. Regression results showed that gender and culture were separately significant predictors of pessimistic AAS. However, self-efficacy did not add significantly to the prediction of AAS. Regarding AAS dimensions, MANOVA revealed a significant main effect of culture, suggesting that British students have more pessimistic attributional styles characterized by the internality dimension in explanations of negative events. Suggestions for future studies are discussed.