The mediating roles of coping and adjustment in the relationship between personality and academic achievement

Background. Existing literature has documented relationships between personality traits and academic achievement as well as some of the mechanisms underlying these links. However, the pathways by which personality traits are associated with achievement during stressful educational circumstances require further investigation. Aims. This study examined a model of the roles of conscientiousness and neuroticism in achievement during the typically stressful university transition, with a focus on coping strategies and academic adjustment to university as mediators in the putative chain of events linking the dispositional traits with achievement. Sample. The sample comprised 498 first-year students attending a metropolitan university in Australia. Methods. A multi-wave design was used with measures of the personality traits administered at the beginning of the semester, measures of coping administered four weeks thereafter, and data on academic adjustment collected mid-semester. Students’ GPA data were retrieved at the end of the semester. Results. In structural equations analyses, conscientiousness was associated with greater primary-control engagement coping and lesser narrow disengagement coping whereas the opposite was found for neuroticism. Furthermore, conscientiousness and neuroticism were indirectly associated with academic adjustment via the coping strategies, and the personality factors were also indirectly associated with achievement via the coping strategies and academic adjustment linked serially in three-path mediated sequences. Conclusions. The findings of this study replicate existing data concerning the direct and indirect relationships of personality with coping and adjustment, and extend these data by elucidating the pathways through which conscientiousness and neuroticism are linked with achievement during a typically stressful educational event