THE VALIDATION OF PERFORMANCE FAILURE APRAISAL INVENTORY FOR THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ROMANIA
THE VALIDATION OF PERFORMANCE FAILURE APRAISAL INVENTORY FOR THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: Fear of failure is a concept that has been studied since 1969, but over the years that followed its conceptualization has undergone various changes. Even if the fear of failure is currently being studied extensively amongst athletes, we considered that research is needed in other fields, such as education. Thus, the objective of our study was to validate the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory among the Romanian population, referring to the educational context of adolescents participating in national competitions. Therefore, the internal consistency, the factorial structure, the external validity as well as the gender discriminating power of the questionnaire were analysed. The sample of our study consisted of 541 teenagers, 9th-12th grade pupils from 41 districts in Romania, participating in national Olympiads in various school subjects (Romanian Literature, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Reading as Life Skills, Socio-Human Sciences, Religion, Geography, History, Mathematics, Biology, Informatics, Physics, and Chemistry). The results obtained support the factorial structure represented by the five factors (Fear of experiencing shame and embarrassment, Fear of devaluing one’s self-estimate, Fear of having an uncertain future, Fear of important others losing interest, and Fear of upsetting important others). Also, the results obtained with regard to the psychometric properties of the questionnaire support that it can be successfully used in the educational field. Through the validation of the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory we hope to promote more intense research in the educational domain of fear of failure, which in the last years suffers from a lack of studies in this direction.

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