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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1562958
Upper Elementary Students’ Self-Efficacy, Affect, and Avoidance Associated with Multisyllabic Words: An Exploratory Study
Provisionally accepted- 1 The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, United States
- 2 Texas A and M University, College Station, Texas, United States
The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire that addressed reading and spelling of big words to understand upper elementary learners' perceptions of their abilities and challenges in relation to multisyllabic words. The development of this questionnaire was part of a larger research project that aimed to develop instructional resources for upper elementary learners. Participants were 108 students across grades 3 to 5. The results of an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) found three factors that addressed self-efficacy for processes and tasks, affect, and avoidance. All factors correlated with reading measures with the exception of avoidance. Further, differences on self-efficacy and affect were found between the lower and low-average reading group. Finally, growth was found on self-efficacy and affect toward reading of big words as a result of instruction. Limitations and implications are discussed.
Keywords: An Exploratory Study self-efficacy, Affect, avoidance, reading, big words, multisyllabic, Decoding, spelling upper elementary
Received: 18 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Traga Philippakos, Quinn and Davis. 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:
Zoi A. Traga Philippakos, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, United States
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