Goals, plans and learning strategies of adolescents and young adults

Abstract

Getting to know how young people think about their future and what factors affect their thinking is essential from the perspective of their success at high school and in higher education. The study aimed at comparing the time perspectives, goal orientations, learning strategies and procrastination behaviors of high school and university students, exploring their relationship to achievement as well as at revealing the underlying connections. The following instruments were used: Time Perspective Inventory (Zimbardo and Boyd, 1999; 2012, in Hungarian: Orosz et.al., 2015); Active Procrastination Scale (Choi and Moran, 2009, in Hungarian: Szabó, 2012); 3 x 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire (Elliot et.al., 2011, in Hungarian: Urbán et.al., 2014); Learning Strategies Questionnaire (Pintrich et.al., 1991, in Hungarian: D. Molnár, 2013). The psychometric properties of the instruments were found to be satisfactory in both age groups. Present-hedonistic and present-fatalistic time perspectives were more common among high school students, whereas for university students, the future-oriented and the past positive time perspectives were more dominant. Although adaptive goals and learning strategies were more common among university students, they also tended to use less effective learning strategies to memorize information. Task goals seemed to have the strongest relationship to learning-related individual characteristics like the various learning strategy scales or performance satisfaction. Moreover, the analysis of the relationship of goals and time perspectives confirmed that task goals are more adaptive than self goals, as the former had stronger connections to future orientation, which is considered to be a positive characteristic.