The Impact of Learning Strategies and Future Orientation on Academic Success: The Moderating Role of Academic Self-Efficacy among Italian Undergraduate Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1 - Abstract: 

Authors need to improve some points:

1.1 - punctuation

p.11 -" factors that can influence academic success: in particular: undergraduate students' learning 12 strategies, academic self-efficacy, and future orientation."

1.2 - avoid abreviations in abstract

p. 15,16,17 - It should be clear to the reader what is T1 and T2, like Time 1(T1) and Time 2 (2)

p. 18 - the same to GPA. Firstly should apear Grade Point Average (GPA) and only after GPA. Otherwise, the reader will never find out what is GPA in the abstract 

2 - Keywords

instead of "grade point average; GPA"; should appear Grade Point Average (GPA) 

3 - Introduction

The title of the article is "The impact of learning strategies, academic self-efficacy and future orientation on academic success", but in the introduction the subjects don't appear in the same order. The authors first present  Learning Strategies and Academic Achievement, The mediational role of Future Orientation, The moderating role of Academic Self-Efficacy. 

4. Materials and Methods

It is important to add more information about the online survey, total number of questions, what were the questions considered in general

p.240 - "18-items scale taken from the QPA questionnaire" - should be "QPA - questionario sui processi di apprendimento in Italian"

Again, the authors present - and well - the questions from Learning strategies, Future Orientation and Academic self-efficacy, as they did in the introduction part. Again, maybe the title needs to be revised.  

p.259 - Using the PROCESS macro for SPSS - the author should briefly explain what is the PROCESS macro and what version of SPSS they used

5 - Results

Although the "The means, standard deviations, internal consistencies, and correlations among all the variables are represented in Table 1." , the main data should be in the text before the Table 1. tables are used to systematize information and not to replace text.

be safe.

Author Response

Reviewers’ main comments and replies:

Reviewer 1

Comment 1: Abstract: Authors need to improve some points: punctuation. p.11 -" factors that can influence academic success: in particular: undergraduate students' learning 12 strategies, academic self-efficacy, and future orientation."

We would like to thank Reviewer 1, who pointed out this small (but relevant) oversight. The sentence was changed as follows:

“The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between relevant factors that can foster academic success: learning strategies, future orientation, and academic self-efficacy”.

Comment 2: 1.2 - Avoid abbreviations in abstract.

We concur with the observation that using an abbreviation in our abstract could reduce the clarity of the entire text. We decided to follow the norms suggested by the American Psychological Association (2020), which state that if an abbreviation has appeared in the abstract as well as the text, it must be defined on first use in both places. Hence, we identified the abbreviation in both areas upon first use.

Comment 3: p. 15,16,17 - It should be clear to the reader what is T1 and T2, like Time 1(T1) and Time 2 (2).

According to this valid comment, we changed the abstract as follows:

“Results of a moderated mediation model indicated that the relationship between learning strategies at Time 1 (T1) and Grade Point Average (i.e., GPA) at Time 2 (T2) was mediated by students’ future orientation. Moreover, this association was moderated by T1 academic self-efficacy”.

Comment 4: p. 18 - the same to GPA. Firstly should appear Grade Point Average (GPA) and only after GPA. Otherwise, the reader will never find out what is GPA in the abstract.

We agree with this reasonable observation and modified the abstract accordingly. Please see the answer to Comment 1.

Comment 5: 2 – Keywords: instead of "grade point average; GPA"; should appear Grade Point Average (GPA).

We agree with the proposed revision. Accordingly, the keyword now appears as Grade Point Average (GPA).

Comment 6: 3 – Introduction. The title of the article is "The impact of learning strategies, academic self-efficacy and future orientation on academic success", but in the introduction, the subjects don't appear in the same order. The authors first present Learning Strategies and Academic Achievement, The mediational role of Future Orientation, The moderating role of Academic Self-Efficacy.

We agree with this observation. In order to improve the clarity of the hypotheses underlying our manuscript, the title has been changed as follows:

“The impact of learning strategies and future orientation on academic success: The moderating role of academic self-efficacy among Italian undergraduate students”.

The introduction first presents the direct relationship between Learning Strategies and Academic Achievement. We discussed the hypothesized mediation of future orientation and, subsequently, the moderating role of academic self-efficacy.

Comment 7: 4. Materials and Methods. It is important to add more information about the online survey, total number of questions, what were the questions considered in general.

In response to this compelling comment by Reviewer 2, we decided to provide readers with additional details about the procedure selection. We decided to address this issue through a substantial revision of the “Materials and Methods” paragraph.

Furthermore, all the questions considered in our survey are described in the “Measures”. For each variable, we report the scale name, the number of questions, the response options, and two questionnaire items.

Comment 8: p. 240 - "18-items scale taken from the QPA questionnaire" - should be "QPA - questionario sui processi di apprendimento in Italian".

In line with this request, the sentence was modified as follows:

“Learning strategies were assessed through the 18-items scale taken from the QPA - Questionario sui Processi Di Apprendimento, developed by Poláček [31]”.

Comment 9: Again, the authors present - and well - the questions from Learning strategies, Future Orientation and Academic self-efficacy, as they did in the introduction part. Again, maybe the title needs to be revised. 

Please see the answer to Comment 3. We are glad the Reviewer 1 appreciated our discussion of the obtained results.

Comment 10: p.259 - Using the PROCESS macro for SPSS - the author should briefly explain what is the PROCESS macro and what version of SPSS they used.

According to this suggestion, the section “Strategy of Analysis” now reports the following sentence:

“The hypotheses were tested through the PROCESS macro developed by Hayes [33] in SPSS (version 23) [34]. This macro adopts a bootstrapping method that provides reliable estimates of standard errors and generates an estimate of the hypothesized effects, including a 95% confidence interval. According to this statistical resampling method, the null hypothesis can be rejected when the confidence interval does not include zero”.

Comment 11: 5 – Results Although the "The means, standard deviations, internal consistencies, and correlations among all the variables are represented in Table 1.", the main data should be in the text before the Table 1. tables are used to systematize information and not to replace text.

We agree about the need to provide the readers with a clear explanation of the obtained results. On the other hand, graphical displays (e.g., tables) are useful for presenting information that would be difficult to interpret if described in a narrative format, such as large amounts of numerical data. Onwuegbuzie, Combs, Slate, and Frels (2010) identified improperly prepared tables and figures, which includes “repeating information in the text” (p. xii), as one of the most common in academic articles. Table 1 reports correlational analyses aimed to provide a first description of the current sample, but remarkable results concerning the hypothesized moderated mediation are reported in Table 2. These results, particularly relevant for our assumptions, are also described and discussed in the “3.2. Hypotheses Testing” section. For these reasons, we decided not to add a (redundant) description of the results reported in Table 1  in the revised version of the manuscript. Of course, we could do so on command.

References:

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Combs, J. P., Slate, J. R., & Frels, R. K. (2010). Evidence-based guidelines for avoiding the most common APA errors in journal article submissions. Research in the Schools, 16(2), ix-xxxvi.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article addresses a very interesting topic, applies an appropriate methodology and presents the results clearly.

I suggest the following observation and recommendation:

Abstract

-Line 18: because it is the first appearance in the text, the full name for GPA and the abbreviation in parentheses must be used. After that, only the abbreviation can be written in the text of the paper.

-Line 14: I suggest that it would be useful for a better understanding that the authors to specify that the two different time are marked with T1 and T2.

-Perhaps the author(s) should complete the Abstract section with the implications (contributions) of this review for the field of studies.

Keywords

- Line 20-21: keywords should be listed in alphabetical order.

2. Materials and Methods

-I would suggest the author (s) to reorganize their lines 220-233 so that they have two distinct sections: a section on Participants and a section on Procedure.

-The Participants Section should better highlight:

• information on the research population and on the research sample.
• who your participants were?
• how many your participants were?
• how your participants were chosen? (Were these students chosen according to a certain criterion? The authors should mention what were the criteria / reasons for choosing these students and not others)

-Line 229-230: the author (s) must specify the sampling method used to select participants, together with a justification for choosing it.

-The Procedure Section should be improved with information about the research period, the research methods, the way of data collection and the order in which steps occured.

3. Results

-Line 217, Line 287, Line 307 and Line 331: For Figure 1, Table 1, Table 2 and Figure 2 the authors should mention the source.

-Line 307: The  abbreviations used in Table 2 are not indicated. It is recommended to include a table foot with the meaning of these.

Author Response

Reviewers’ main comments and replies:

Reviewer 2

Comment 1: Abstract.

-Line 18: because it is the first appearance in the text, the full name for GPA and the abbreviation in parentheses must be used. After that, only the abbreviation can be written in the text of the paper.

According to this valid comment, we changed the abstract as follows:

“Results of a moderated mediation model indicated that the relationship between learning strategies at Time 1 (T1) and Grade Point Average (i.e., GPA) at Time 2 (T2) was mediated by students’ future orientation”.

-Line 14: I suggest that it would be useful for a better understanding that the authors to specify that the two different time are marked with T1 and T2.

We agree with this observation and revised the Abstract as follows:

“To this purpose, a longitudinal study was performed on a sample of N= 87 undergraduate students from one of the largest Italian universities (63.4% males, 74.2% enrolled in the first year). Participants filled in an online questionnaire at two different time points, with a time lag of 12 months”.

-Perhaps the author(s) should complete the Abstract section with the implications (contributions) of this review for the field of studies.

In order to satisfy this request, we added the following sentence at the end of the abstract:

“The current findings invite to a thorough review of training interventions for improving academic achievement”.

Comment 2: Keywords. - Line 20-21: keywords should be listed in alphabetical order.

We can’t find any reference that suggests listing keywords in alphabetical order. In addition, keywords should help researchers find a scientific publication in databases. Consistent with this purpose, our decision to list them according to the relevance of different constructs in our research.

Comment 3: Materials and Methods. -I would suggest the author (s) to reorganize their lines 220-233 so that they have two distinct sections: a section on Participants and a section on Procedure.

The authors guidelines of Education Sciences require explicitly to describe briefly the main methods applied in a section named “Material and Methods” (see: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/instructions). Hence, we must satisfy these instructions.

Comment 3: -The Participants Section should better highlight:

information on the research population and on the research sample. Who your participants were? How many your participants were? How your participants were chosen? (Were these students chosen according to a certain criterion? The authors should mention what were the criteria / reasons for choosing these students and not others). Line 229-230: the author (s) must specify the sampling method used to select participants, together with a justification for choosing it.

In response to this compelling comment by Reviewer 2, we decided to provide readers with additional details about the procedure selection. We decided to address this issue through a substantial revision of the “Materials and Methods” paragraph:

“The current study was part of a broader project aimed at evaluating the quality of teaching processes and outcomes in the international Second cycle degree in Economics and Business from one of the largest Italian Universities. Four members of the research group presented the general aims of the project to course coordinators, teaching staff, and students. Then, students were asked to provide their institutional email address and, one week later, received a message reporting the link that allowed them to fill in an online survey. The first page of the questionnaire summarized background information about the general purpose of the study and emphasized respondents' anonymity and data confidentiality. This page also included a statement regarding personal data processing, following the Italian Privacy Law (Law Decree DL-196/2003). The research obeyed the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki [30] regarding ethical standards for research. This introduction also stated that participation in this study was voluntary, and participants had the opportunity to withdraw from the study at any stage. At T1, N= 93 students filled in the questionnaire, with a response rate of 46.5%. After 12 months, a total sample of N= 87 filled in the same survey for the second time (T2). At this point, the administrative division of the master's degree course provided researchers with the GPA of participating students. The sample was mainly composed of males (63.4%), and most of them were enrolled in the first year of the course (74.2%)”.

Comment 4: -The Procedure Section should be improved with information about the research period, the research methods, the way of data collection and the order in which steps occurred.

In line with this suggestion, we decided to revise the “Materials and Methods section” and clarify the steps performed in the current research. Please see the answer to Comment 3.

Comment 5: Results -Line 217, Line 287, Line 307 and Line 331: For Figure 1, Table 1, Table 2 and Figure 2 the authors should mention the source.

Unfortunately, this comment is quite unclear to us. These figures and tables do not have any source. They were specifically built for the current manuscript.

Comment 6: -Line 307: The abbreviations used in Table 2 are not indicated. It is recommended to include a table foot with the meaning of these.

We concur with this observation and revised the notes as follows:

Notes: Low= 3.45, Medium= 4.00, High= 4.54; *p≤ .05; **p≤ .01; ***p≤ .001. SE = Standard error; Boot 95% CI = 95% confidence interval using the bootstrap bias-corrected method using 5000 samples.

Reviewer 3 Report

See attached file, please.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewers’ main comments and replies:

Reviewer 3.

Comment 1. ABSTRACT: The authors must specify the sample size, % male or female, mean and SD. More important is to indicate the type of sampling performed and statistical analyses performed.

In line with this suggestion, the abstract now reports the following sentence:

“To this purpose, a longitudinal study was performed on a sample of N= 87 undergraduate students from one of the largest Italian universities (63.4% males, 74.2% enrolled in the first year)”.

Comment 2. INTRODUCTION: This section is poorly justified as: The novelty of this work is not robustly adequate. This concern is important as there is previous empirical evidence in Italian population. However, these studies are not cited and described. Why?

E.g.; Caprara et al. (2008). J. of Educational Psychology, 100, 525-34.

Alivernini & Lucidi (2011). The J. of Educational Research, 104.

Zuffiano et al. (2013). The Open J. of Psychol., 13.

Caprara et al. (2004) + Caprara et al. (2011). + Chen et al. (2010).

Gianta, Caprara et al. (2013). Personality & Individual Differences, 23, 102-108.

Agustiani et al. (2020).

In this sense, what are the differences-improvements-novelties of the present ms. regarding these studies?

We thank the Reviewer for reporting this valuable literature. We conducted a thorough review of the recent literature, and the cited documents cited are not utterly comparable to our research. They differ significantly in the sample involved (i.e., they are based on students from junior or high school) and the constructs under investigation (i.e., most of them focus on general self-efficacy rather than academic self-efficacy).

Caprara et al. (2008) reported a study based on a sample of students ranging in age from 12 to 22 years. Thus it also involves students in junior high schools that are not comparable to our sample.

In a similar vein, Alivernini & Lucidi (2011) reports a research assessing the role of self-efficacy on a sample of high school students. This research does not fit to our manuscript, aimed to test the moderating role of academic self-efficacy on a sample of university students.

We were not able to find Zuffiano et al. (2013). The Open J. of Psychol., but we found Zuffianò et al. (2013) Learning and Individual Differences. Again, this study focuses on a sample of eighth-grade students (Mage = 13.47) from a junior high school. In our view, the comparison with students enrolled in the international Second cycle degree in Economics and Business would not be appropriate.

We did not find Gianta, Caprara et al. (2013). Personality & Individual Differences, 23, 102-108 in any database of peer-reviewed literature.

We did not find Agustiani et al. (2020) in any database of peer-reviewed literature.

On the other hand, we concur with the need to stress the original contribution of this paper further. Accordingly, we added the following sentence on page 3:

“Based on the empirical evidence and the reasoning discussed, the current study was aimed to delve deeper into the role of future orientation in explaining the impact of learning strategies on academic achievement (i.e., GPA). In doing so, this study contributes to the current understanding of the role played by individual resources (i.e., learning strategies, future orientation, and academic self-efficacy) in promoting students’ academic success. To this purpose, the moderated mediation model depicted in Figure 1 was tested and the following study hypothesis was developed:”.

Furthermore, the novelty of this work was emphasized by adding the following text to the “Discussion" section, to stress the differences with the empirical contributions reported by Reviewer 3:

“The current study was conducted with the primary goal to add knowledge about the factors that can predict the attainment of positive results during the academic path. In particular, this research was aimed to expand the current understanding of the role played by personal resources (i.e., learning strategies, future orientation, and academic self-efficacy) emerged as crucial to performing adequately in the academic setting. The present findings have the virtue to overcome the limitations of previous researches in different ways. Most of these studies explored the antecedent of academic success on samples of high school and college students and employed broader definitions of self-efficacy, rather than focusing on self-efficacy beliefs referred specifically toward academic domain (Alverini & Lucidi, 2011; Zuffianò, 2013). Consequently, the obtained findings allow drawing relevant implications for both scientists and practitioners. On the one hand, they contribute to the overall understanding of the mechanisms underlying the learning process and the attainment of academic results among undergraduate students”.

We have tried to include the novelty of our work and our contribution to the existing literature. In doing so, we hope that our paper and its contribution is clearer and more direct for the reader.

Comment 3. It is not appropriate to base this ms. on studies made using samples from other countries cultures-ethnicities. Thus, as previous studies related to the objective of this ms.?

Scholars indicate that a suitable literature review in empirical papers must cover the relevant literature and synthesizing it with clarity (Boote & Beile, 2005). In particular, coverage is a crucial feature for a sound literature review. The text must cover the main research strands and build a framework where the paper could be positioned. This reasoning is focused on the requirement to provide appropriate references and state-of-the-art in the research field (Nakano & Muniz, 2018). Thus, confining the paper to the national context and researches does not represent an essential feature for an exhaustive and careful literature review. Instead, the decision to cite studies from a single country could impair the quality of our contribution and limit its impact.

On the other hand, we concur with the Reviewer's observation to include also studies performed in Italy. Hence, we added the reference to papers that could substantiate our research purpose. Thus, we added the following citations:

Alivernini, F.; Lucidi, F. Relationship between social context, self-efficacy, motivation, academic achievement, and intention to drop out of high school: A longitudinal study. J. Educ. Res. 2011, 104(4), 241–252.

Zuffianò, A.; Alessandri, G.; Gerbino, M.; Kanacri, B.P.L.; Di Giunta, L.; Milioni, M.; Caprara, G.V. Academic achievement: The unique contribution of self-efficacy beliefs in self-regulated learning beyond intelligence, personality traits, and self-esteem. Learn. Individ. Differ. 2013, 23, 158–162.

Comment 4. Is there prior evidence showing significant cross-cultural differences between the Italian population and others?

To the best of our knowledge, most research focused on academic achievement cross-cultural comparison between the US and the eastern world (e.g., Lan, Legare, Ponitz, & Morrison, 2011; Lee et al., 2017; Phillipson, & Phillipson, 2007). Thus, the current paper does not report any research comparing Italy to other cultural contexts.

Comment 5. Indicate general objective, specific objectives and hypotheses according to previous studies published in Italy. In this line, hypothesis 1 and Figure 1 do not bring anything new. I do not understand this matter. Therefore, taking into account a wide variety of studies which are not cited in this ms., the objective, justification, novelty and empirical support raised are a great mistake.

We decided to include further studies that could be (to a certain extent) close to our research but not wholly comparable due to the sample involved and the constructs explored. These changes are reported in response to Comment 2.

Comment 6. PARTICIPANTS: see, please, indications for the Abstract.

The “Participants” section describes the N of students involved, the response rate, their mean age and the year of course currently attended. We also added relevant details concerning the research procedure. Thus, we hope that the revised version of the abstract and the method section is in line with Reviewers’ expectations.

Comment 7. MEASURES: This information is ambiguous, unclear since the authors do not indicate the existence of invariance measurement of these instruments through cultural-ethnic groups (Italia, etc.). If the authors of this MS. they do not demonstrate measurement invariance across cultural groups for each instrument applied, the results of this study lack scientific rigor and are very uncertain. The authors did not apply the counterbalancing technique in the administration of the instruments.

We agree about the need to detail the translation procedures applied in the current study. Accordingly, we added the following text to the “Measures” section:

“Future Orientation was assessed through 5 items belonging to the corresponding subscale dimension from the Student Outcome Expectation Scale [29]. For the Italian version, a conventional translation and back-translation procedure [32] was performed by two Italian bilingual academics and one bilingual professional independently to ensure the equivalence of meaning and translation accuracy”.

“Academic self-efficacy was assessed through the 8-items scale taken from the College Student Self-Efficacy Scale [29]. As for the assessment of future orientation, this scale was translated from English to Italian through a translation and back-translation procedure [32] performed by two Italian bilingual academics and one bilingual professional”.

Comment 8. Statistical analyses and results: The corresponding effect sizes are not provided and interpreted. Another important mistake.

In line with Preacher and Kelley (2011), the current study reported bootstrapped confidence intervals concerning the indirect effects under investigation. This choice is also supported by scholars that advise against the use of effect size in the mediation (e.g., Wen & Fen, 2015).

Comment 9. With the previous comments in mind, the Discussion and Conclusions section of this MS. They are not reliable, accurate. I even think they are pretentious.

The entire paper has been revised in order to provide the additional information and explanations required by the Reviewers’ comments. Thus, we hope that this new version meets the Reviewers’ and Editor’s expectations.

References:

Alivernini, F., & Lucidi, F. (2011). Relationship between social context, self-efficacy, motivation, academic achievement, and intention to drop out of high school: A longitudinal study. The journal of Educational Research, 104(4), 241-252.

Boote, D. N., & Beile, P. (2005). Scholars before researchers: on the centrality of the dissertation literature review in research preparation. Educational Researcher, 34(6), 3-15

Brislin, R.W. (1980) Translation and content analysis of oral and written material. In: Triandis, H.C. and Berry, J. W., Eds., Handbook of cross-cultural psychology: Methodology, Allyn and Bacon, Boston (pp. 389-444).

Lan, X., Legare, C. H., Ponitz, C. C., Li, S., & Morrison, F. J. (2011). Investigating the links between the subcomponents of executive function and academic achievement: A cross-cultural analysis of Chinese and American preschoolers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 108(3), 677-692.

Lee, H. J., Lee, J., Makara, K. A., Fishman, B. J., & Teasley, S. D. (2017). A cross-cultural comparison of college students' learning strategies for academic achievement between South Korea and the USA. Studies in Higher Education, 42(1), 169-183.

Nakano, D., & Muniz Jr, J. (2018). Writing the literature review for empirical papers. Production, 28.

Preacher, K. J., & Kelley, K. (2011). Effect size measures for mediation models: quantitative strategies for communicating indirect effects. Psychological Methods, 16(2), 93.

Wen, Z., & Fan, X. (2015). Monotonicity of effect sizes: Questioning kappa-squared as mediation effect size measure. Psychological Methods, 20(2), 193.

Zuffianò, A., Alessandri, G., Gerbino, M., Kanacri, B. P. L., Di Giunta, L., Milioni, M., & Caprara, G. V. (2013). Academic achievement: The unique contribution of self-efficacy beliefs in self-regulated learning beyond intelligence, personality traits, and self-esteem. Learning and Individual Differences, 23, 158-162.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

This ms. should be accepted for to publish in this Journal.