Association of Health and Psychological Factors with Academic Achievement and Non-Verbal Intelligence in University Students with Low Academic Performance: The Influence of Sex.

Academic achievement, measured with the grade point average (GPA), is a stable characteristic that has been associated with many sociodemographic and psychological variables; however, the relation of these variables with GPA has not been totally elucidated. The objective of this study was to perform an association of health, psychological and personal variables with GPA and non-verbal intelligence in low-academic performance population according to sex. We invited health sciences university students who had failed the same subject twice to complete a set of sociodemographic and psychological variables and a non-verbal intelligence test. The GPA, admission exam test and preparatory GPA were obtained. We included 124 students, and found that GPA was associated with non-verbal intelligence in women but not in men; in whom, having a job and having a romantic partner, were more correlated. In women, positive relations with others, emotion perception and weekly physical activity hours were marginally correlated with GPA; while in men, emotion regulation and self-motivation had a tendency of correlation with GPA. In addition, we found that non-verbal intelligence was associated somatization and the number of diseases in women. Academic achievement is regulated by different variables in each sex; therefore, intervention programs addressed by sex are needed to increase it.

Autorreportes verbales en voz alta para la identificación de procesos de razonamiento en pruebas estandarizadas / Verbal Self-reporting to Identify Reasoning Processes in Standardized Tests

Resumen: Los estándares actuales, para la evaluación de la calidad psicométrica de las pruebas psicológicas y educativas, estipulan que una de las evidencias requeridas que justifican las inferencias derivadas de la aplicación de un test se refiere a las estrategias para contestar a los ítems que lo componen. Por lo tanto, el objetivo del presente artículo se propone presentar los resultados de una investigación, que consistió en la ejecución de entrevistas semiestructuradas a un conjunto de 15 estudiantes universi tarios de primer ingreso, cuyos reportes orales fueron analizados con el objetivo de fundamentar un conjunto de estrategias para contestar los ítems verbales de la Prueba de Aptitud Académica de la Universidad de Costa Rica, que habían sido identificadas previamente. Los resultados indican que efectivamente los participantes emplearon las estrategias propuestas, lo cual constituye una eviden cia de gran importancia sobre las habilidades de razonamiento que se miden con los ítems verbales de la Prueba de Aptitud Académica. Finalmente, se concluye con una discusión sobre los resultados acerca de la utilidad de los autorreportes verbales que recaban evidencias de validez para un test y sobre futuras investigaciones en esta línea.

Abstract: Current standards for assessing the psychometric quality of psychological and educational tests stip ulate that one indication required to justify the inferences derived from the application of a test are those related to answering strategies for the test items. Thus, this article presents the results of a study that involved the execution of semi-structured interviews with a group of 15 college freshmen, whose oral reports were analyzed to provide support for a set of strategies to answer previously identified verbal items from the "Academic Aptitude Test" (Prueba de Aptitud Académica) at the Universidad de Costa Rica. The results indicate that participants actually used the proposed strategies, which is important evidence about the reasoning skills measured by the Prueba de Aptitud Académica verbal items. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the results, the usefulness of verbal self-reports to gather evidence for test validity and future research along these lines.