Personal and contextual determinants of ethnically diverse female high school students’ patterns of academic help seeking and help avoidance in English and mathematics

This study investigated female high school students’ (N = 293) patterns of help seeking in the domains of English and mathematics. Help seeking was operationalized using both self-report measures of need-contingent help seeking and help avoidance, as well as a behavioral measure of help seeking, namely the number of times students attended after-school tutoring sessions. As predictors of help seeking, the motivational variables of achievement goals, task-value, and expectancy for success were considered, alongside cognitive and metacognitive strategy-use, need for cognition, academic procrastination, and a belief in quick learning. Overall, the motivational variables of expectancy for success, task-value, and mastery goals and the cognitive variables of metacognitive self-regulation and rehearsal were found to significantly predict help seeking in English and math. No discernable effects of grade level or ethnicity on patterns of help seeking were detected. Several subject-level differences, however, were found, suggesting that students’ help-seeking patterns do vary by domain.

Research highlights
► Expectancy for success, task value, mastery goals predict help seeking.
► Metacognitive self-regulation and rehearsal also found to predict help seeking.
► More variance explained in help seeking than help avoidance.
► No effects of ethnicity or grade level found.