The way in which students attribute causes to their successes and failures in school has
important implications for their development. The objectives of our research were to validate the
Academic Success and Failure Attribution Questionnaire (ASFAQ) and to analyze the gender and
grade differences in the ASFAQ data for primary and secondary school students in Spain. For
the construction and analysis of the psychometric characteristics of the scale, an exploratory factor
analysis (EFA) and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed. To compare the ASFAQ
scores based on gender and school year, a parametric t-test for independent samples and a one-way
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. A total of 562 students in the fifth (n = 228) and sixth year
(n = 186) of primary studies and the first (n = 134) and second year (n = 94) of secondary studies
participated in the research. The results showed the adequate factorial structure, internal consistency,
and validity of the ASFAQ, in addition to statistically significant differences by gender and school
year. This research provides scientific evidence about the psychometric properties of the ASFAQ to
assess and understand attributional style in the educational context, as well as current and consistent
empirical evidence related to gender and grade differences in the attributional patterns of academic
success and failure for primary and secondary school students.
