Measuring self-handicapping in learning and performance domains: A German language adaptation of the Academic Self-Handicapping Scale

Many students experience the fear to fail in exams as threatening to their self-esteem. The individual learner needs to find a way to regulate his/her self-esteem and to protect it from further threats, respectively. A regulation strategy frequently used is self-handicapping. Here, a student provides him-/herself with a handicap before an exam (e.g., less sleep in the night before the exam). If he fails in the exam, he can attribute the failure to his handicap. However, since habitual self-handicapping is associated with negative consequences (e.g., poor performance), it is necessary to dispose of a diagnostic instrument that enables researchers to determine a student's habitual tendency to self-handicap. We therefore tested a German adaptation of the Academic Self-handicapping Scale (Urdan, Midgley & Anderman, 1998) across several samples of German college students. Results overall revealed the expected correlations between self-handicapping and important validity criteria like self-esteem, cognitive and motivational learning strategies, and achievement.