DEVELOPMENT OF A SCALE MEASURING STUDENT ATTRIBUTIONS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO SELF-CONCEPT AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONING

A measure of children's attributions (effort, external, ability) for s uccess and failure outcomes in the social domain was developed for the present study. The instrument was administered to 237 fourth and fift h graders. Moderate to good psychometric properties were obtained: Cro nbach's alphas .63 to .85; item-subscale correlation coefficients, .50 to .83; and supportive model-based factor analytic data. Social outco mes attributed to ability and effort were significantly related to sel f-concept and social functioning. More specifically, data supported hy pothesized relationships among students' self-attributions for social success and failure. Some implications for the classroom are described .