Incorporating motivation into predictive models of academic performance: Development and validation of the motivation for academic achievement scale.
Published: 2007
Language: eng
Number of pages: 81
ISBN-13: 9780494275078
Description: This paper describes the development and validation of a questionnaire measuring Motivation for Academic Achievement. The questionnaire was designed to clarify the construct of academic achievement motivation, and to assess the extent to which this construct is able to predict academic achievement once dispositional variables (i.e. intelligence, personality, and demographics) have been controlled for. A 20-item pilot scale measuring general motivation was developed through interviews with successful graduate and senior undergraduate students, and a 100-item scale measuring attributional style was developed through a literature review; these scales were then completed by 192 undergraduate participants. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 5 and 12 factors, respectively, in the two scales; yet, only 3 of these factors (self-discipline, intrinsic motivation to achieve, and ability attributions for failure) independently predicted GPA. These 3 variables alone, however, predicted over 30% of the variance, and adding IQ to the regression model increased the explainable variance to 54%.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 3326.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2007.

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