Attribution Theory

It is an attempt to examine the types of causal attribution student’s make in their success and failure in variety of settings and how these attributions affects the expectations for future success and failure. A qualitative approach of content analysis was used to measure the student’s responses on the question of ‘Explain the most significant event of your life and how do you attribute the causes behind them. The present study was undertaken on engineering students of National Institute of Technology, Rourkela’. The finding clearly shows that students are conscious of their learning and the amount of success and failure. They have pointed out various inner and outer factors and locus of control for their achievements.

Keywords: Attribution,

How people answer ‘wh’ questions. Attribution theory was developed overtime by Fritz Heider, Edward Jones, Keith Davis, and Harold Kelley. Heider(1958) believe that people act on the basis of their beliefs. Therefore, beliefs must be taken into account if psychologists were to study human behavior. He stressed on the common men’s belief explanation. Heider distinguished between two general categories of explanation - internal and external. Internal attributions implicate characteristics of the individual (such as ability, attitudes, personality, mood, and effort) for a particular behavior, whereas external attributions implicate external factors (such as the task, other people, or luck) for an event to occur. Weiner (1971) added an additional dimension to causal attribution. He proposed 2 types of causal explanation – stable and

No study so far has enabled students to convey in their own words their experiences with life

Methods: In this study we looked for some common features among the teens while describing the significant decision of their life which is taken by themselves. Students from different years and branches are asked to write down the most significant decision for them till date and how do they infer the cause behind it.

A qualitative approach of content analysis was used to measure the student’s responses on the question of ‘Explain the most significant decision of their life and how do you infer the causes behind it ’

Content Analysis: Content analysis of information rich data followed the constant comparative method (Patton, 2002, Strauss, 1987). Data were transcribed and transcripts and were read several times for comparing and contrasting between them. Content analysis of the data is solely based on student’s perception and the subjective interpretation of their experiences. Therefore the question f objectivity and fact validation were not relevant to this study.(Bruner 2004, Denzin,1989, Holsti,