HOMEWORK EFFORT AND STUDENTS ’ CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 1 Is Doing Your

Research has shown that sustained homework effort enhances academic performance and that students’ conscientiousness is a powerful predictor of students’ homework effort. But does homework—as homework proponents claim—in turn also influence the development of conscientiousness over time? In the present study, we examined whether students’ homework effort in two subjects (i.e., mathematics and language) was associated with inter-individual differences in students’ development of conscientiousness in the early years of adolescence. Bivariate change models with a total of N = 2,760 students revealed that homework effort and conscientiousness were systematically related over time (Grade 5 to Grade 8). Most importantly, students who invested more effort in their homework showed more positive development in conscientiousness.