A quantitative analysis of the identification of personality traits in engineering students and their relation to academic performance

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on identifying personality traits in engineering students and testing whether they are related to academic performance. In addition, the importance of the personality construct in the educational and vocational training context was studied. A sample of 235 students from the Construction Engineering and Computer Engineering Schools of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso was used. Through correlation and econometrics analysis, the results obtained indicate that there is a relation between academic performance and the personality traits of extraversion, openness and conscientiousness. In addition, these results led to characterization of students based on their personality traits and provided elements that may enhance the development of an effective personality that allows students to successfully face their environment, playing an important role in the educational process.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic performance
• personality traits
• process of teaching-learning
• professional training of engineers
• econometrics analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 F-statistic = 24.61 Prob. = 0.0000 α = 0.01; Durbin-Watson = 2.149 d_L = 1,421 d_U = 1.670 α = 0.01.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nueva Ingeniería para el 2030 [grant number 14ENI2-26905]; CONICYT/FONDECYT/REGULAR [grant number 1171243]; and CONICYT/FONDECYT/REGULAR [grant number 1160455].