Impact of Campus Environment and Personality Traits on the Academic Performance & Psychological Well-being of Engineering Undergraduates

Abstract

Engineering education plays a significant role in enhancing the quality of engineers. Certain factors such as personality traits, campus environment and engineering self-efficacy could potentially impact the academic performance and psychological well-being of engineering undergraduates. Therefore, it was analyzed how personality traits, campus environment, engineering self-efficacy and their interactions predict performance-related outcomes and well-being of engineering undergraduate students. It was hypothesized that significant relationship exists between personality traits, campus environment, and self-efficacy in predicting academic performance and psychological well-being. Data was collected from 1005 engineering undergraduates from 16 universities in Pakistan. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to investigate latent interactions between the variables. Personality traits and engineering self-efficacy had a significant impact on academic performance. Campus environment, personality traits and engineering self-efficacy had a significant impact on psychological well-being. Campus environment and personality traits had a significant impact on engineering self-efficacy. Engineering self-efficacy mediated the relationships between variables. However, there was no impact of campus environment on academic performance. The comparison of results on the basis of gender also suggests that males generally score higher in academic performance than females. The findings provide empirical evidence for linking campus environment, personality traits, and engineering self-efficacy with the academic performance and psychological well-being of students, and suggest how these relationships could guide educationists and policy makers to take steps to enhance the engineering self-efficacy, academic performance and psychological well-being of engineering undergraduates.