Using profile analysis and ROC curves to examine the relationship between perfectionism and academic self-efficacy in secondary school students

The aim of this study is to clarify the relationship between multidimensional perfectionism and academic self -efficacy in adolescents using a dual approach: variable -oriented and person -oriented. The sample consists of 1.375 students aged between 15 and 18 years ( M = 16.36, SD = 1.04). The Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale and the Perceived Self -Efficacy in Academic Situations Scale are employed. Four perfectionist profiles as a result of the combination between socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP) and self -oriented perfectionism (SOP) are obtained using the Latent Profile Analysis : very low perfectionism , low perfectionism , high perfectionism , and moderate perfectionism . The high perfectionism group score significantly higher in academic self -efficacy than the others. Moreover, post -hoc comparisons show that there are statistically significant differences in academic self -efficacy between all profiles, with moderate to large effect sizes, except for those with very low and low perfectionism . Logistic regressions demonstrate that SOP and SPP positively and significantly predicted high scores in academic self-efficacy. Analysing ROC curves, it is found that both SOP and SPP have good and similar discriminative ability, correctly classifying 79% and 76% of participants with and without high levels of academic self-efficacy, respectively. Possible explanations and implications for Educational Psychology are discussed. (c) 2024 Universidad de Pa & iacute;s Vasco. Published by Elsevier Espa & ntilde;a, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).