Academic Motivation Dimensions and Achievement in University Students

Abstract

Although there have been ongoing developments in academic motivational theories, a need remains to examine these across contextual domains. This thesis considered the contextual domain by focusing on three academic evaluation tasks: math tests, presentations, and essays. Self-report items based mainly on expectancy value theory were developed across three hypothetical evaluation tasks and administered to a sample of 421 university students. Using a multi-trait (i.e., expectancy, value, and effort), multi-task evaluation design, performance expectancy was found to have smaller correlations across tasks than did effort. Patterns of students’ reactions to instances of poor academic performance on tests or exams, and their causal attributions of failure were also investigated using latent profile analysis. Three profiles were found for causal attributions: exclusively-effort, mixed-disengaged, and mixed-engaged. Responses to failure identified three profiles: highly impacted, moderately impacted, and resilient. Relationships between the motivational constructs and final course grades are also presented and discussed