The Efficacy of Motivationally Related Variables and Family Interaction in Predicting Academic Achievement among High School Students

This study investigated the effects of family interaction, self-efficacy, educational value, academic motivation and helplessness on academic performance using data from 203 (125 male and 78 female) high school students. Correlational analysis indicated strong relations among the variables. Results from path model revealed that educational value, academic motivation, and family interaction directly predicted academic performance; self-efficacy directly predicted educational value, academic motivation, and helplessness. However, contrary to available literature, self-efficacy did not significantly predict academic performance. Academic motivation and educational value have directly influenced performance but the direct influence of helplessness on performance failed to reach significance. As expected, self-efficacy played a mediational role between family interaction and the other independent variables. The joint contribution of the variables including sex to the variance of performance was 48.8%. However, academic motivation, educational value, and family interaction alone accounted for 48.7% in the variance of performance. Ethiopian Journal of Development Research Vol. 28 (2) 2006: pp. 63-90