Moderating Role of Age and Marital Status in relationship of Conscientiousness and Achievement Goals among Students in Babylon University in Iraq

Determining the role of different variables for the achievement goals in students is one of the important research topics. The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between the conscientiousness and achievement goals with regard to the moderating role of age and marital status in the students from the city of Babylon, Iraq.

Research method was correlation in the form of hierarchical regression analysis. The statistical population of research included all third and fourth semester bachelor degree students in psychology studying in Babylon University in Iraq. From the mentioned statistical population, 258 students were selected by convenience sampling method. The data were collected by using conscientiousness questionnaire (Costa & McCrae, 2008), achievement goals questionnaire (Midgley et al, 1998), age and marital status. To analyze the data, Pearson's correlation coefficient and hierarchical regression analysis were used by SPSS 26 software.

The results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the conscientiousness and age with achievement goals (p<0.01). The results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that age does not moderate the relationship between conscientiousness and achievement goals, but marital status moderates the relationship between conscientiousness and achievement goals (p<0.01).

Based on the results of the present study, it can be concluded that, along with age and marital status, conscientiousness are important variables for increasing the level of achievement goals in the students from the city of Babylon, Iraq.