Purpose:
The Academic Behavioural Confidence (ABC) focuses on confidence in actions and plans related to academic study. This study considers the ABC measure in an analysis of recent accounting and finance student-graduates across UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
Design/methodology/approach:
Principal component analysis (PCA) employed on survey data establishes the previously identified four dimensions of ABC, namely, Grades, Verbalising, Attendance and Studying. The study then considers these dimensions in two different directions, Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering and Constellation Graph Index Approach (CGIA).
Findings
The findings, with emphasis on graphical elucidation, offer insights into different dimensions of confidence existing within students. Through FCM, clear statistical connection between forms of ‘lack of confidence’ and gender, degree classification, etc. The CGIA based analysis offers a potential practical tool for understanding the role of confidence in the student experience in HEIs.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations in this study are the use of 350 UK student-graduates, and that they are asked to consider their student time retrospectively (the results identify similar ABC dimensions as in the extant literature).
Practical implications
The FCM results offer real incentive for management in HEIs to consider student confidence as a factor in their student experience. The CGIA analysis, offers real practical elucidation of individual student level confidence (as well as student group level results).
Social implications
There is increasing concern on the well-being of students, this work will contribute to this understanding.
Originality/value
While the ABC instrument has been previously introduced, the analyses undertaken here take the understanding of this description of student confidence in novel directions
