Abstract:
First-year university students face significant change and adjustment to a variety of academic and social demands that may impact their academic experience and success. The monitoring of student progress and post-enrolment predictive variables of academic success is necessary as academic success at university is associated with better employment opportunities and impacts institutional efficacy reports. Due to limited research on the psychosocial predictors of academic success among first year South African university students, the aim of the study was to investigate the relationships between academic success and help-seeking, academic motivation, self-esteem, perceived stress, and adjustment, as psychosocial predictors of academic success, among first-time first-year students in the Faculty of Humanities at a South African university. This study employed a quantitative, non-experimental, correlational study to tests these relationships and data was gathered via an online survey. The study found that respondents had positive attitudes towards psychological and academic help seeking and that their self-esteem was within the normal range. Additionally, the respondents were extrinsically motivated, experienced moderate levels of perceived stress and had low levels of adjustment. Results from the binary logistic regression found that none of the psychosocial variables (help-seeking, academic motivation, self-esteem, perceived stress, and adjustment) could predict academic success. The limitations of this study prompt future studies on this topic.
