Impact of academic achievement on moral intelligence dimensions, leadership skills, achievement motivation and self-efficacy among Saudi middle schools' gifted students

Objective: To evaluate the impact of academic achievement on moral intelligence dimensions, leadership skills, achievement motivation and self-efficacy among Saudi Middle Schools' Gifted Students. Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted among Saudi middle schools' gifted students in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The study explored the moral intelligence, leadership skill achievement motivation and self-efficacy of gifted students using a validated and piloted self-administered questionnaire. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 122 out of 733 male gifted students in 89 schools in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Data was analysed using SPSS. Results: The study included 46, 42, and 34 first, second and third level middle school students respectively. The highest academic achievement was A+ which represents 60.7%, followed by A- (27.9%), B+ (9%) and B- (2.5%). The students demonstrated moderate level of moral intelligence dimensions, leadership skills, achievement motivation and self-efficacy. The leadership skills are as follows: B- (156.33 ± 26.690); B+ (163.27 ± 13.951); A- (171.32 ± 19.957); A+ (174.04 ± 17.983). ANOVA tests revealed that there were no significant differences based on the academic achievements (P = 0.140). Self-efficacy mean rank for B-, B+, A- and A+ academic achievement were (23.50); (52.82); (64.76) and (62.83) respectively. This implies that students who had A- academic achievement had higher self-efficacy than others; however, this difference was not significant (0.210). Similarly, there were no significant (P = 0.452) differences in the achievement motivation. Students who had A+ had higher mean rank (64.24), followed by A- (57.26), B- (49.83) and B+ (48.91). The overall score of moral intelligence domain was similar across the four levels of academic achievement. Students who had A+ had the highest mean rank (63.75), followed by A- (61.46), B+ (56.18) and B- (26.00); P = 0.311. Conclusion: Academic achievement had no significant impact on moral intelligence dimensions, leadership skills, achievement motivation and self-efficacy among Saudi Middle Schools' Gifted Students.