Belin-Blank Center Research Activities
By Susan Assouline

Our primary source of data comes from BESTS. As part of BESTS testing, we ask students about their attitudes towards school in general, as well as towards specific academic subjects. The 1994 group of BESTS students and their parents responded to student and parent questionnaires and we are looking at responses to these items. Below are some highlights of the results from responses to two specific items of this questionnaire.

Attributions
Among the questions on the Student Questionnaire were two that asked students to what they attributed doing well in school, and to what they attributed not doing well.

The results were as follows:

When you do well on your school work it is usually because:
N=3200	% of respondents
	male	female
a. you are smart	39.1	28.4
b. you work hard	38.0	51.6
c. the work is easy	7.2	5.4
d. you are lucky	0.5	0.3
e. your teachers like you	0.1	0.0
f. you do your work the right way	15.0	14.3

When you do not do well on your school work it is usually because:
N=3200	% of respondents
	male	female
a. you are not smart enough	0.5	0.6
b. you don't work hard enough	43.8	43.3
c. the work is hard	22.6	26.1
d. you have bad luck	4.4	2.8
e. your teachers don't like you	1.0	0.3
f. you don't do your work the right way	27.7	26.8

These results tell us that:

1. When gifted students do well in school they primarily attribute their success to:
   ability (a)-39.1 % of boys and 28.4 % of girls;
   effort (b)-38.0 % of boys and 51.6 % of girls; and
   work habits (f)-15.0% of boys and 14.3 % of girls.

2. When students do not do well in school, they attribute such performance to:
   effort (g)-43.8 % of boys and 43.3 % of girls;
   work habits (l)-27.7 % of boys and 26.8 % of girls; and
   task difficulty (i)-22.6 % of boys and 26.1% of girls.