title: The impact of self-concept and college involvement on the first-year success of medical students in China.
abstract: Students' first-year academic success plays a critical role on their overall development in college, which implies the need to concentrate on identifying ways to improve students' first-year academic success. Different from most research on the subject, this study attempted to combine the sociological perspective of college impact with a psychological perspective to synthetically explore the causal relationship of specific types of self-concept and college involvement with academic success of medical students. A longitudinal study was conducted using 519 matriculates at a medical university in mainland China. We conducted the Cooperative Institutional Research Program freshmen survey and the Your First College Year survey to collect data of the pre-college and college academic and social self-concept, college involvement components, and some input characteristics. The academic success was measured by the first-year grade point average. A pathway analysis was conducted and showed the following results. Having high academic self-concept, being engaged in class and putting effort in homework or study directly contributes to increasing college achievement. Students' pre-college achievement and self-concept, faculty interaction, and homework involvement positively affected students' college academic self-concept development, which indirectly improved average grade point. These findings contribute to our understanding of a student's ability to interact with his or her collegiate environment and to experience academic success.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China.
authors.forename: Ying-Xue
authors.initials: YX
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Chun-Quan
authors.initials: CQ
authors.lastname: Ou
authors.forename: Zhi-Tao
authors.initials: ZT
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Cheng-Song
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.forename: Cui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Ping-Yan
authors.initials: PY
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D002681:China; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult