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The study examined the predictive value of adolescents’ personality trait ratings by different groups of informants in explaining academic achievement [grade point average (GPA)] while controlling for students’ sex and their mothers’ education. The Inventory of Child/Adolescent Individual Differences was employed as a measure of students’ personality traits at the end of elementary schooling (mean age = 14.7 years) and two years later when the participants attended secondary schools. The trait ratings were obtained through self‐, maternal and peer reports at both measurement occasions. They explained substantial portions of unique variance in the students’ GPA concurrently, and over time. Ratings by each of the three groups of informants had an incremental validity over one another in predicting school grades. Among personality variables, conscientiousness and low extraversion were consistently predictive of GPA.
Notes
1. In 2003, at the first time of measurement of this follow‐up study, the last cohort of Slovene students completed the eight‐grade elementary school. According to the new school legislation, the elementary school takes nine years and the children start obligatory schooling at the age of six.
2. The personality ratings by two classmates were aggregated to increase the reliability of trait scores (Smrtnik Vitulić and Zupančič 2009).
3. There are various secondary programmes in Slovenia, taking two, three or four years of schooling. The four‐year programmes are technical and high school programmes. Enrolment is limited in a vast majority of high schools and in several technical schools. The selection is based upon students’ academic achievement over the last years of elementary schooling.