Development of an Inventory of Noncognitive Predictors of Academic Success

The journals of education and psychology abound in studies of "prediction of academic success" in various courses, curricula and training programs. Since grades are readily available as a criterion and since previous grades and the scores on varied standardized tests are available as predictors, such studies are simple. The results of these studies are useful in selecting the best of available tests or the best combinations for predictive purposes, thus increasing the usefulness of the tests for group prediction. However, in spite of a number of these studies, and the refinement of statistical procedures used in conducting them, no such studies have yielded correlations high enough to permit accurate prediction for individual students. It is a comparatively simple matter to identify those students who cannot succeed: it is much more difficult to predict those who will.