Hakan AYDOĞAN

 Locus of control is one of the major factors of school/academic performance. People who have external locus of control believe that life events are controlled by fate, chance, or luck. Conversely, those who have internal locus of control believe that life events are influenced by their behavior. The aim of this study is to check psychometric properties (i.e. the reliability and validity) of Trice Academic Locus of Control Scale using a sample of 402 EFL students involved in tertiary education in Europe (Nmales = 198, 50.5%; Nfemales = 204, 49.5%; Mage = 21.56, SDage = 1.88). Their ages ranged between 18 and 27 years old. After excluding eight items with poor psychometric characteristics, a unidimensional underlying factor structure was examined of the TALCS from the data. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach's Alpha) for the revised version of the TALCS scale was .96. The mean value of their years of study was calculated as M = 3.02 whereas the standard deviation was SD = 1.24. Gender differences in academic locus of control were not statistically significant at predefined alpha level of .05. The correlation between participants' academic locus of control and their age was very small and statistically insignificant. Some implications of these findings were discussed as well as suggestions for future studies in this field of pedagogic psychology.

Keywords: academic locus of control, EFL students, reliability, validity.