Correlation between studying strategies, personal and psychological factors with academic achievement and intelligence in health sciences university students: a cross-sectional study.

Introduction: To date, there are no sufficient studies aimed to determine a correlation between personal, academic, and psychological variables with academic achievement, measured with the grade point average (GPA) and intelligence in university students according to each sex.

Study Aim: To determine the correlation between studying strategies, personal and psychological factors with GPA and intelligence in a sample of health sciences university students.

Methods: Health Sciences university students, were invited to participate, those who accepted were cited in a computer room where they signed an informed consent and filled an electronic questionnaire with sociodemographic, behavioral, psychological variables and studying strategies (from the MLSQ instrument) afterwards they performed a verbal and non-verbal intelligence test (Shipley-2).

Results: A total of 439 students were included, from which 297 (67.7%) were women. The mean of age was 20.34 ± 2.61 years old. We found that no differences in GPA where observed between sexes. We detected a higher correlation between combined intelligence and GPA in women than in men. In addition, most studying strategies showed a higher correlation with GPA than intelligence scores in men´s sample. All these findings coincide with the fact that preparatory GPA was the most correlated variable with university GPA in both sexes. Finally, women showed higher levels of the sum of diseases, somatization, anxiety, depression and academic stress than men, and all these variables showed low significant correlations with the combined intelligence score only in women´s sample.

Conclusion: Verbal and non-verbal intelligence scores show a lower association to GPA in men than in women, while studying strategies showed a higher association with GPA in men than in women.