Consequences of academic disappointment inventory: confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and convergent validity.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

The research literature on academic disappointment and its relationship to student engagement is scarce. This article aims to present the results of a confirmatory factor analysis and the reliability analysis of the Consequences of Academic Disappointment Inventory. It also aims to provide information on the relationship between academic disappointment and other constructs (i.e., academic motivation, perfectionism, self-critical rumination, and negative emotions).

METHODS

The current study is a correlational study with a cross-sectional design, and the data were collected via an online platform. A total of 512 Hungarian students participated in the study. Participants were asked to recall a situation in which they received negative feedback and consequently felt disappointed in the past few months of their academic life. They were then asked to complete a series of questionnaires.

DISCUSSION

The results show that students experience disappointment with themselves, their performance, and the authority giving the feedback in different ways. Self- and performance-related disappointments are similar in terms of their revealed factor structures (i.e., motivation, lack of motivation, behavioral investment, and lack of behavioral investment). Whereas disappointment with the authority has a different factor structure. The current results also show that academic disappointment can be either an activating or a passivating emotion in terms of its effects on student engagement. Our results revealed a set of significant factors associated with students' engagement in the context of academic disappointment, including feelings of shame and hostility, perfectionism, self-critical rumination, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation for external regulation, and amotivation.