CHILDRENS ACTION - CONTROL BELIEFS ABOUT SCHOOL PERFORMANCE - HOW DO AMERICAN CHILDREN COMPARE WITH GERMAN AND RUSSIAN CHILDREN

Using the revised Control, Agency, and Means-ends Interview (T. D. Lit tle, G. Oettingen, & P. B. Baltes, 1995), we compared American childre n's (Grades 2-6) action-control beliefs about school performance with those of German and Russian children (Los Angeles, n = 657; East Berli n, n = 313; West Berlin, n = 517; Moscow, n = 541). Although we found pronounced cross-setting similarities in the children's everyday causa lity beliefs about what factors produce school performance, we obtaine d consistent cross-setting differences in (a) the mean levels of the c hildren's personal agency and control expectancy and (b) the correlati onal magnitudes between these beliefs and actual school performance. N otably, the American children were at the extremes of the cross-nation al distributions: (a) they had the highest mean levels of personal age ncy and control expectancy but (b) the lowest beliefs-performance corr elations. Such outcomes indicate that the low beliefs-performance corr elations that are frequently obtained in American research appear to b e specific to American settings.