Achievement motivation, anxiety and academic success in first year Master of Nursing students

Forty-one first semester master level nursing students from three Canadian universities participated in this descriptive correlational study to identify the influence of achievement motivation and anxiety on their academic success. Academic success was determined by their first semester grade point average (CPA). Participants had high achieving tendencies (M = 73.5) and academic ability (M = 81.9), supporting Atkinson's (1957, 1964) achievement motivation theory which was used as the framework. While state anxiety was negatively correlated, trait anxiety was the only valid predictor of academic success. Academic ability and inherent anxiety had a greater potential for predicting students who would succeed, which has implications for nurse educators, administrators and researchers. However, the need to assess both cognitive and non-cognitive variables to determine master level nursing students' ability to succeed is recommended.