Affective Variables Related to Mathematics Achievement among High-Risk College Freshmen

This study explored the relations between affective variables—anxiety about mathematics or confidence, effectance motivation, perceptions of mathematics as a male domain, attitude toward success in mathematics, and students' perceptions of their parents' attitudes toward their children as learners of mathematics—and performance in a first-quarter developmental studies algebra course. The affective variables together accounted for 34% of the variance in first-quarter mathematics grades. Anxiety was the only attitudinal variable that made a significant contribution to the proportion of variance for the total group and for the 38 women. For the 20 men both anxiety and attitude toward success contributed significantly to first-quarter mathematics grades.