The Development and Validation of Scales Assessing Middle School Students' Achievement Goal Orientation

Abstract

Traditionally, although theorists have described achievement motivation in terms of approach and avoidance tendencies, goal orientation, research has focused primarily on two approach goals (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984; Ames, 1987) : the learning or task goal to develop and improve one's ability, and the performance or ego goal to demonstrate ones ability through the comparison with other people. Recently, three-dimensional achievement goal theory including the goal to develop ability (learning goal orientation), the goal to demonstrate ability (performance-approach goal orientation) and the goal to avoid the demonstration of lack of ability (performance-avoid goal orientation) has emerged as a new direction in motivational research (Button, Mathieu, & Zajac, 1996; Elliot, 1994; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Vandewalle, 1997; Middleton & Midgley, 1997; Elliot & Church, 1997; Skaalvik, 1997; Midgley, Kaplan, Middleton, Maehr, Urdan, Anderman & Roeser ; 1998). Accordingly, a scale to assess the goal of avoiding the demonstration of lack of ability (performance-avoidance goal) was included with scales assessing approach goals in a survey given to students in the middle school. The results of studies conducted with three different samples of 1,005 middle school students were used to describe the validity and reliability of the scale. The content-related evidence of validity by means of 5 experts, the construct-related evidence of validity through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, and the criterion-related evidence of validity included into concurrent validity with TEOSQ, intrinsic motivation, and the implicit belief of intelligence and prediction validity with the score of physical education all supported the conclusion that the instrument operationalized the theorized three-dimensional construct.본 연구는 1999년도 서울대학교 사범대학 발전기금의 지원에 의해서 연구됨