Correlation between self-regulation strategies and learning outcomes and life satisfaction in engineering students

Abstract

Self-regulation is one of the key assets contributing to productivity and satisfaction from life. It is in their student years that people actively develop self-regulation, or rather its components (planning, modeling, etc.). Our study seeks to analyze self-regulation strategies in engineering students and their correlation with the level of life satisfaction and learning outcomes. Life satisfaction is a vital psychological aspect, which is crucial for a positive assessment of life quality. Nowadays, life satisfaction among higher education students is often associated with their performance. Nonetheless, a theoretical analysis of research has failed to confirm this statement. Our study involved 73 engineering students aged 17 to 26, among them 70% men (51 participants) and 30% women (22 participants). A large proportion were bachelor’s degree students (78.1%), with fewer individuals enrolled in master’s (17.8%) and PhD (4.1%) programs. Our methodology included the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) by E. Diener; the Style of Behavior Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SSP-98) by V. I. Morosanova, and data on respondents’ academic performance according to the university’s rating system (10-point scale). In the course of the study, all the participants demonstrated an individual system of conscious self-regulation of voluntary activities developed to a moderate degree. Overall, all of them had such skills as conscious activity planning, comprehending the conditions required for achieving a goal, programming one’s activities, a sufficient level and sustainability of criteria for evaluating the activity results, and being flexible and autonomous in self-regulation. The correlation analysis showed that life satisfaction increased with the development of the conscious self-regulation skill, especially in terms of situation modelling and flexible adaptation to change, while students’ performance improved after a more proper evaluation of their activities.