The role of academic self-concept in the relationship between grade 12 performance and academic perfomance in first-year psychology students

English: The first year of university is an important transitional and developmental period. Students enter university with diverse pre-university experiences, which could affect how successfully they change over to the new university environment. In this study, the relationship between Grade 12 academic performance and first-year academic performance in psychology students at the University of the Free State (UFS) was investigated. Furthermore, the potential mediating and/or moderating roles of students’ generational status and academic self-concept (ASC) in this relationship were examined. A non-experimental type, quantitative research approach with a correlational design was adopted. A sample of 203 first-year psychology students was recruited by using non-probability, convenience- sampling methods. Participants completed an online self-report survey consisting of questions on their demographic information and ASC. The moderating role of generational status was measured before conducting further statistical analyses. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used to measure the relationship between Grade 12 academic performance and psychology marks of the first year. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to determine the moderating and/or mediating role of ASC in this relationship. In this study, generational status was not a moderator in the aforementioned relationship. Grade 12 academic performance explained a significant amount of variance in first-year psychology marks. ASC had a main effect on participants’ psychology module marks, but was neither a mediator nor a moderator in the relationship between Grade 12 academic performance and first-year psychology marks. It can be concluded that academic performance at university is dependent on students’ prior academic performance and their ASC