A Meta-Analysis of the Relationships between Elements of Positive Psychology and Academic Achievement

The main objective of this study was to synthesize the findings of different studies on positive psychology and gain a general understanding about the relationships between the elements of positive psychology, including psychological well-being, optimism, happiness, resilience, and hope, and academic achievement. The study was also to identify and resolve possible contradictory findings about the issue. In line with these objectives, a meta-analysis design was used to conduct this study. The educational resources of this study were selected from all the available articles on the relationships between elements of positive psychology and academic achievement. After establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria, 19 studies were selected as the sample and from these studies, 35 r-type effect sizes were extracted and analyzed using CMA2 software. The results revealed a statistically significant combined effect size for both fixed and random effect models; however, the identified relationships were found to be low. Furthermore, the effect size of the relationships between happiness, hope, optimism, psychological capital and academic achievement was small, and the effect size of the relationship between resilience and academic achievement was moderate. Base on the overall results of this study, it can be concluded that improvement of positive psychology elements can make the education process more enjoyable and can increase individuals' ability to respond to educational challenges in their learning environment more effectively.