Investigating Academic Boredom in Canadian and Chinese Students

Abstract

Recent research has shown that boredom has an adverse impact on students’ learning and achievement (e.g., Mann & Robinson, 2009). Given the deleterious impact of boredom on learning, this study evaluated two boredom scales—a learning-related boredom scale and a boredom coping scale—with samples of college students from Canada and China. After establishing the validity of the two boredom scales, this study examined the impacts of boredom and coping strategies on achievement in the two settings. Results suggested that the learning-related boredom scale was invariant across groups, whereas the boredom coping scale showed partial measurement invariance. Findings also indicated that in the Western sample, academic boredom affected students’ self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, which in turn influenced their performance. However, such a linkage was not evident in the Chinese sample. In terms of boredom coping strategies, the negative impact of endorsing avoidance approaches on achievement was not found.