The Effect of Self-Esteem on Academic Performance: Evidence from University Students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

Self-esteem is considered one of the most important psychological resources that underlie students' approach to learning, their experience in learning-related failure, and their continued motivation to pursue a degree Programme (Baumeister et al., 2003; Orth & Robins, 2014). Despite years of focus and debate on the self-esteem–performance relationship from a Western psychological educational perspective, the empirical evidence available from South Asian higher education, and from Pakistan specifically, is still relatively sparse, and methodologically constrained by using small, non-probability samples. The purpose of present study is to focus on the impact of self-esteem on academic outcomes of the students appearing in semester final examinations in public universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan and to see whether there is any difference between the effect of self-esteem in academic outcomes of male and female students and between the effect of self-esteem on academic outcomes of students of different years. A cross-sectional survey design was used to gather data from a stratified random sample of 343 undergraduate students from five public-sector universities. Rosenberg's (1965) ten-item Self-Esteem Scale was used to assess self-esteem, and academic performance was assessed by cumulative grade point average (CGPA) complemented by a multi-item self-reported academic performance scale. Data were analysed using the two-step assessment of the measurement and structural models recommended by Hair et al. (2019), and the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was used via the SmartPLS 4 software tool (Ringle et al., 2022). The measurement model had good reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. The positive and statistically significant relationship of self-esteem to academic performance (β = 0.412, t = 7.85, p < .001) accounts for 17.1% of the variance in academic performance. In addition, the multi-group and interaction-term analysis shows that the year of study significantly moderates this relationship but gender does not. The results suggest a possible expansion of the self-enhancement and self-determination theories to a South Asian higher education setting, and have practical implications for student-counselling, faculty advising, and policy development to support students' psychosocial bases for academic success. Restrictions and suggestions for further research are addressed.