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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1487038

Need for cognition, academic self-efficacy and parental education predict the intention to go to college -evidence from a multigroup study

Provisionally accepted
Lina Kramer Lina Kramer 1Stefanie Lüdtke Stefanie Lüdtke 2Philipp Alexander Freund Philipp Alexander Freund 3*
  • 1 Amsterdam University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2 Polizei Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
  • 3 Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Academic success is not solely the result of cognitive ability. There is evidence that traits such as students' need for cognition (NFC) and self-efficacy beliefs influence academic success. Beyond cognitive ability and personal traits, social background constitutes an important factor. Students from academic households are (still) much more likely to pursue an academic degree than their peers from non-academic households. Past research on traits and beliefs relevant in (higher) education has focused on academic success, but only to a limited extent on its direct precursor: the decision to pursue an academic degree. This study aims to investigate NFC and academic self-efficacy (ASE) as positive predictors of students' intentions to go to college, with consideration of students' generational status with regard to academic education. Results based on survey data from 1,389 German high school students provide evidence for positive relationships between NFC, ASE, and study intention, with ASE acting as a mediator of NFC's effect. Our analyses also investigate the effects of NFC and ASE on study intentions for students from academic as compared to students from non-academic households via multigroup analyses.

    Keywords: need for cognition, Academic self-efficacy, academic ambition, college-going intentions, First-Generation Students

    Received: 27 Aug 2024; Accepted: 16 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Kramer, Lüdtke and Freund. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Philipp Alexander Freund, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

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