Japanese children's action-control beliefs about school performance

Guided by research on German, Russian, and American children, we tested whether the tripartite action-theory model of children's psychological control generalises to Japanese children (grades 2-6, N = 817). Specifically, we used the Control, Agency, and Means-ends Interview (CAMI) to assess whether Japanese children's self-related agency beliefs, general control expectancies, and causality-related means-ends beliefs about their school performance are similar to those of children from other sociocultural contexts. The CAMI has shown strong cross-cultural validity, but it has not been tested in Japanese children. Because the CAMI measurement structure generally validated in this sample and the resulting action-control constructs showed many intercultural similarities. we concluded that the action-control beliefs generalise to Japanese children. The similarities likely reflect inter-cultural commonalities in teaching formats and everyday conceptions of performance in formal schooling contexts. In addition to these important similarities, however, we found inter-cultural differences in the self-related agency beliefs (i.e. patterns that were specific to this Japanese sample). For example, the role of luck: and the relations between effort and ability showed unique patterns in these children (e.g. lower correlations than in other sociocultural settings).