Research is becoming more frequent around the factors that are associated with academic achievement; most of them represent these variables through a qualification [22, 23]. However, the study of academic performance may be somewhat limited if its attention focuses solely on a value such as the average [24] since a number does not fully determine the student's daily performance.

Given this limitation, there is an interest in studying student’s engagement, defined as the willingness of students to participate in academic activities [6, 25, 26]. Student engagement can help prevent low academic performance, dropout and other negative factors for students and institutions of higher education [5]. These authors argue that the study of student’s engagement should be holistic.

According to Fredricks et al. [6] student engagement is determined by three components: behavioral, emotional and cognitive. Behavioral engagement refers to the active participation of individuals in school and extracurricular activities; emotional engagement is what entails reactions (positive and negative) towards people or situations in the school context; cognitive engagement includes the psychological investment to learn, in other words, the achievement-oriented thoughts, which are behind the effort made by the students.

There are studies that associate engagement with personal well-being; this is present in the school setting [27]. The present investigation seeks to integrate the study of positive psychosocial factors to the research of university student’s engagement.

In the search for academic performance predictors, cognitive intelligence is recurrently found. However, studies have shown that people with very high intellectual abilities do not necessarily complete their studies satisfactorily or achieve success in the workplace. Therefore, the importance of the concept of emotional intelligence emerges, as an alternative to the intellectual coefficient [28].

Emotional intelligence is defined by Goleman [29] as people’s ability to distinguish and give an appropriate response to states of mind, temperaments, motivations, and desires. According to Mayer et al. [30], emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions to improve thinking and to understand and regulate them effectively. Mestre [31] presents a theoretical review of the concept and concludes that it is composed of factors such as self-knowledge, self-efficacy, and empathy.

Self-knowledge is defined as the ability to answer about oneself, that is the set of knowledge that a person has about himself, in which first there is the identification and then an evaluation [32]. These own judgments are developed from childhood, especially with family relationships. The self-concept is closely linked to the assessment perceived within the family environment.

The emotional intelligence component called self-efficacy is defined as the person’s belief in his capacity to organize and carry out a task, and in this way to fulfill his objectives [33]; it depends to a great extent on the individual's thinking about their abilities. As long as the person considers that they have the capacity to do something, is more likely to do it and vice versa [34].

The last factor that integrates emotional intelligence is empathy, according to Mestre [29] it helps people to balance the emotional behavior of others in a precise way and also shows the ability to choose acceptable responses to such behaviors. It’s the basis of healthy interpersonal relationships because it helps to consider the opinion and position of other people.

Emotional intelligence is a factor that improves student’s performance both inside and outside the school environment. However, it is not the only personal characteristic that is associated with academic success; there is evidence that proves the relationship of the construct called orientation to happiness and academic performance [11]. This factor was proposed by Peterson et al. [35], who combine three types of well-being; the two classic facets proposed by Ryan et al. [36] the hedonic and the eudaimonic well-being; and flow, a concept took from the theory of Csikszentmihalyi [37].

The hedonic well-being is the sum of the positive feelings, emotions, and states of mind associated with the pleasure of an individual [38]; emphasizing issues that give emotion to the person usually at the time of performing the activity. This concept is mainly related to subjective well-being and can be understood as the sum of pleasurable issues considered as good for the subject [39].

In contrast to this facet is the eudaemonic well-being, which is related to the positive emotions that result from reaching something, so this sensation can rarely be obtained in the short term; this well-being emphasizes personal development, the way to face the challenges of life and the effort of people to achieve their goals. This well-being is usually obtained from activities that give meaning to life [40].

The last type of well-being is flow, and it refers to the happiness that each obtains when engaging (and penetrating) to perform a pleasant activity [35]. For an activity to be considered as a flow, it is necessary that the individual can perform it, but at the same time it requires a certain degree of difficulty. Otherwise, it can become boring and cause frustration. This type of well-being can be found in the workplace, school, and sports, among others.

In addition to the psychological aspects, it’s necessary to include social issues since the students are not attending classes in isolation, they are in constant interaction with their classmates and teachers; while this relationship is perceived as positive, the school environment can help foster student success [41]. Students who consider themselves in a good social environment within their institution of higher education perform activities more assertively, while people who don’t feel included among their peers tend to be absent, have problems with group activities or not give importance to their studies.

A positive school climate is one that stimulates emotions of trust and security in the people associated in the school, to be precise, it affects students, teachers, parents and even the community in general [19]. The school climate is something intangible that can be perceived by people who come into contact with the school [42].

This social component has been studied as a variable associated with engagement, a study presented by Sampermans et al. [43] concludes that relationships presented within the school context are predictors of the student’s electoral commitment. Although it’s not exactly an engagement in school activities, it is evidence of the link between these factors. Within the school, climate can be found in various components. However, this study focuses its interest on educational interaction, which includes interpersonal relationships between teachers and students, as well as the coexistence among classmates [44].

A stratified probabilistic sampling with a reliability of 95% and an error of 6% was carried out. A total of 226 students from all the courses taught at the Technological Institute of Sonora, Guaymas, participated. 52% were female and 48% were male. 91% reported being a regular student at the time of participating in the investigation.

To evaluate the psychological factors, authors used four sections of the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (CIE) [29], the response scale is a 5-point Likert type (1=Completely false for me to 5=Completely true for me). The dimensions resumed were: self-knowledge (16 items), self-efficacy (10 items), empathy (9 items) and emotional knowledge (10 items). To measure the orientation to happiness we used the Spanish version [45] of the scale made by Peterson et al. [33], is composed by 18 items divided equally into the dimensions of hedonic, eudaimonic and flow. It contains answers with a Likert scale, ranging from “completely opposite to me” to “very similar to me.”

Social factors were evaluated through the school climate scale [42], implementing the subscale of educational interaction, constituted by the factor “relationship with peers” that includes six items, and “the relations with the teachers,” where nine statements that measure the teacher-student interaction are presented. The participants answered using a Likert scale with options that range from total disagreement to total agreement.

Finally, the student engagement was evaluated through a translation of the USEI scale (University Student Engagement Inventory) proposed by Maroco et al. [5], in a Spanish version presented by Durón et al. [46] which consists of 15 items and is divided into the following dimensions: cognitive, affective and behavioral. Each one composed of 5 items; participants could respond using a Likert-type response scale that ranges from 1 = never to 5 = always.

After establishing the representative sample, data were collected in classrooms or areas within the institution of higher education. Subsequently, a database was made where the responses of all the participants were captured. Using the statistical package SPSS version 21, an internal consistency analysis of the scales was performed; subsequently, indices for each variable were computed with the means values of the corresponding indicators; with these indices the statisticians that mark the measures of central tendency of each scale were obtained; finally, using the EQS program a model of structural equations was elaborated.