Causal attributions and engagement in class: a daily diary study of success and failure experiences

Throughout the world, students typically receive grades as an evaluation of their schoolwork. Students' subjective interpretations of the causes behind these grades – their causal attributions – can influence their educational experiences, including their engagement in class. While previous research has thus far mostly studied attributions as relatively stable dispositions, the current study addresses their situational nature by employing intensive longitudinal methods to examine attributions and their daily associations with engagement. Across two weeks, 623 7th grade students ( M age = 13.13; 49.8% female) in 49 classrooms across six Dutch secondary schools provided daily assessments of their behavioral engagement alongside attributions for their daily grades. Variance decomposition analyses revealed substantial variation both within and between students, indicating that students exhibit both a general tendency in their attributions as well as daily fluctuations. Multilevel modeling showed that between-student differences in attributions rather than daily attributions were mostly associated with differences in engagement in class. Attributing success to luck proved to be an exception. On days when students attributed their successes more to luck, they tended to be less engaged in class. The findings suggest that students who experience their good performance as being out of their control may be less likely to engage in class. By examining students' daily attributions as they unfold in their natural environment, this study makes a valuable contribution to enhancing the understanding of attributions in real-world contexts.