Subscales

Öz

Investigating the Underachievement of University Students in Turkey: Exploring Subscales

Abstract

This study extends the work of Baslanti and McCoach (2006), which aimed to identify the characteristics of gifted underachievers at the university level and the reasons for their underachievement using the School Attitude Assessment SurveyRevised (SAAS-R). In this study, underachievement refers to a discrepancy between outstanding achievement shown on a standardized test and low performance in school-related tasks compared to students of the same age (Clark, 1997). The present study was conducted with 30 underachievers using a semi-structured interview with 44 questions. The interview questions addressed five factors of underachievement: academic self-perceptions, attitudes toward teachers, attitudes toward school, goal valuation, and motivation/self-regulation. Data were analyzed using content analysis and frequencies were obtained for all items. Results from the interviews indicated that the findings paralleled those obtained in the original study