A Weight and Meta-Analysis on the Academic Achievement of High School Students

Understanding the determinants of academic achievement (AA) is crucial for virtually every stakeholder interested in personal development and individual and societal wellbeing. Extensive research in several areas, such as education, economics, or psychology, has addressed this topic, identifying a vast number of determinants that impact high school students’ AA. In this work, we perform a meta-analysis, including a weight analysis of 49 quantitative studies that investigate this topic, exploring the best predictors of high school students’ academic success. We also explore moderation effects. Our results show that academic self-efficacy and socioeconomic status are the best predictors of AA, and they are statistically significant. Other statistically significant predictors, albeit less common in the analyses, are mastery avoidance, motivation, sleep habits, and work avoidance. Implications for theory and practice and directions for future research are discussed.