Abstract:

The relevance of the study of students' social maturity is due to changes in the social, economic, and political spheres of society. The social maturity of university students is of great importance for successful educational activities. At the same time, the development of students' social maturity is one of the most complex and insufficiently studied problems. The purpose of this research is to study the predictors of students’ academic performance in the context of social maturity and professional self-determination.

The main hypothesis is that the social maturity of students, expressed in psychological (motive for choosing a profession and self-esteem social maturity) and social (assessment of their financial situation and living conditions) features, largely determines academic performance.

The study followed 2nd – 4th-year university students and master's students of the Department of Psychology of the Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin (n = 141; 20 males and 121 females). The average age of the participants was 23 ± 5 years.

Measures:
1) "Self-assessment of social maturity" (evaluation of such qualities as, for example, social activity, commitment, control, responsibility, purposefulness in different conditions. Namely, in a normal state, in stressful situations, and specifically in a situation of distance learning (because of COVID-19).
2) "Questionnaire of motivation for psychological education". As the main points, statements related to the studied dispositions (social activity, commitment, etc.) were used.
3) Academic performance dynamics from the first to the current course.
4) The degree of independence in socio-economic issues (regardless of parents).

Research results:
There are no significant correlations between the motives for choosing a psychologist's profession and student performance. This suggests that the motivation for choosing the profession of a psychologist does not affect student performance. With that, the severity of such parameters as commitment, interest, prudence, self-determination, and happiness in terms of self-assessment of students' social maturity is associated with professional self-determination. Regression analysis shows that academic performance is affected by the degree to which the student’s anxiety in the normal state is expressed (β = 2.06), his responsibility in a stressful situation (β = 2.06), and during distance learning (β = 1.71). Regression analysis does not reveal the influence of the degree of student independence and the motivation for choosing a psychologist's profession on academic performance.

Keywords:

Social maturity, educational success, academic performance, professional motivation.