Personality, Learning Styles, Learning Motivation, and Academic Performance: A Study of Macau Business Undergraduates in a Microeconomics Course

Abstract

The importance of undergraduate business education is rooted in the preparation it provides for meeting the future challenges of the business jungle. However, empirical research about undergraduate business education in Macau is neglected to some extent. It is necessary to put more efforts to investigate this topic in order to provide more information for institutions of higher education to improve the quality of business education. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible relationships among Macau business undergraduates’ personalities, learning styles, learning motivations, and academic performance. This study recruited 268 (92 males and 74 females) first-year undergraduate Chinese business majors from a university in Macau. Based on zero-order correlation, we found two variables significantly associated with academic performance: emotional stability from the personality variables, and self-efficacy from the motivational variables. Regression analysis revealed that three variables were valid predictors: test anxiety, self-efficacy, and Active-Reflective dimension. We examined possible effects of gender and Macau residency status on our sample’s academic performance using two-way ANOVA, and found that the gender variable impacted our participants’ academic performance (female students had higher scores than males did).

Keywords: Personality, Learning style, Learning motivation, Academic performance, Microeconomics course