Structure and Semantic Differential Placement of Specific Causes: Academic Causal Attributions by Chinese Students in Hong Kong

The present study explored the structure and dimensional meaning of causal attributions for actual academic performance. Chinese high school students were asked to rate the importance as well as dimensional meaning (along locus, controllability, stability, and globality dimensions) of thirteen specific causes. A principal components analysis of the importance ratings generated four factors among which three were loaded on partially overlapping dimensions and the fourth was unrelated to any dimension. Results also revealed that effort, interest in study, study skill, and ability in study shared common characteristics in that they were the most important causes and were very internal, controllable, stable, and global. The findings were discussed in terms of socio‐cultural values in the Chinese culture.