The Interaction between Grades and Social Comparison Concern within a Course

In order to understand more about the student experience in our physics courses, we investigate the evolution and associations between exam grades and Social Comparison Concern (SCC) among students in an introductory calculus-based physics course. SCC is a scale measuring the concern over one's own ability or performance relative to others and has previously been found to be moderately correlated with grades. We find evidence that exam scores partially mediate changes in SCC scores, and in turn, SCC scores partially mediate changes in exam scores, though the mediation effects are somewhat small, around 10% of the total effects between grades and SCC. We also find that while SCC scores are correlated with exam scores, they are only very weakly correlated with non-exam grade components, indicating that exams, and not other graded assignments, are driving the changes in student concern. Further, we find that women and Black and Hispanic/Latinx students, report higher levels of SCC, prompting questions about how this may relate to systemic inequities and lead to observed grade disparities. Overall, the results provide evidence for a dynamic feedback loop in which SCC may either negatively or positively interfere with student performance on exams.