Academic emotions in university students : a comparative study

Abstract

Research highlights the impact of achievement emotions on learners’ motivation and learning, demonstrating that emotions play a pivotal role in shaping students’ academic performance. This study evaluated the use of an emotions assessment tool, initially developed in a Canadian university setting, in a similar university setting in Malta. We employed the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ-S) short version (Bieleke et al., 2021) to gauge students’ emotions in academic settings. The means of the Maltese students were comparable to those of the Canadian reference group, and a Principal Components Analysis consistently identified the same two groups of emotion components across all three questionnaire contexts. In this study, 156 undergraduate students attending a tertiary-level institution completed the AEQ-S online. Respondents’ scores were compared to those of a first and a second reference group using t-tests. The structure of responses was further analysed using principal component analysis. Although not dissimilar, respondents' emotion scores were stronger (p < 0.05) than those of the reference samples in most contexts. These analyses provide insight into the use of this tool in the specific setting in which it was applied and suggest that further investigation is advisable.