Measures of Academic Motivation - A Conceptual Review PDF

Measures of Academic Motivation: A Conceptual Review
Author(s): Ross Moen, Kenneth O. Doyle and Jr.

Source: Research in Higher Education, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1978), pp. 1-23
Published by: Springer
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RESEARCHIN HIGHEREDUCATION
Volume8, pages 1-23
© 1978APS Publications,Inc.
MEASURES OF ACADEMIC MOTIVATION:

A Conceptual Review
Ross Moen and Kenneth O. Doyle, Jr., Measurement Services

Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
This review examines the measurement of academic motivation in college students. It

distinguishes pencil-and-paper group-administered instruments according to their con-
ceptions of academic motivation: academic motivation taken as a single general motiva-
tion, as single specific motivations, or as a complex of motivations. It evaluates these
classes of instruments in terms of the interpretability and the utility of the information
each type of instrument is likely to provide.
Key words: academic motivation; motivation
Motivation is important to students' progress and satisfaction in col-

lege. The kinds of things students want or need, the extent to which
college offers those things, the intensity with which they like or dislike
certain aspects of college, and the attractiveness of competing activities
all influence which schools, program majors, courses, and teachers
students will choose. Such factors also influence how bard students
will work in school, how easily they will be able to learn, how well
they will perform, and how satisfied they will be with their educational
experience.
Despite the importance of these factors, only a few pencil-and-paper
instruments have been developed specifically to measure academic
motivation. Indeed, there seems to be little agreement even as to what
might be the better ways to develop such measures. Not only do the
various investigators all tend to employ different strategies, but few
make any reference to what others in the same field are doing.
A number of research reviews have concentrated on measurement of
different aspects of academic motivation, and these reviews help to
Addressreprintrequeststo Mr. Ross Moen, MeasurementServices Center,Universityof
Minnesota,9 ClarenceAve., S.E., Minneapolis,MN 55414.
7
2 Moen and Doyle
create some order in the field. Taylor (1964), Lavin (1965), Goldberg
(1971), Gosh (1972), and Lenning, Munday, Johnson, Well, and Bruce
(1974) reviewed theories and research which related students' charac-
teristics to academic achievement; Baird (1974) reviewed measures of
the motivational characteristics of college environments; McReynolds
(1971) reviewed measures of intrinsic motivation; Maehr and Sjogren
(1971) and Clarke (1973) reviewed research on achievement motivation
and education.
West and Uhlenberg (1970) have provided a general review of meas-
ures of academic motivation. These authors identify five types of as-
sessment techniques which have been applied to motivation and
suggest advantages and disadvantages for each: production measures,
self-report instruments, observer ratings, projective tests, and objective
tests.
The present review examines a subset of the assessment techniques
described by West and Uhlenberg: paper-and-pencil, group-admin-
istered measures. The review emphasizes instruments suitable for
measuring the academic motivation of college students, although in-
struments used in secondary schools will also be considered, because
there can be much similarity in content and approach. The review fo-
cuses on the conceptual aspects of measures of academic motivation.
To help potential users determine how well various kinds of instru-
ments will meet their needs and to help researchers identify areas for
further investigation, instruments are examined in terms of their under-
lying conceptions of academic motivation and with regard to the inter-
pretability and utility of the information the different kinds of instru-
ments are likely to provide. Appraisal of the validity, reliability, and
generalizability of particular instruments will require the extensive
treatment of a separate monograph.
In the present review, three types of instruments are distinguished:
single general motivation measures, single specific motivation meas-
ures, and multiple motivation measures.
SINGLE GENERAL MOTIVATIONMEASURES
One of the most common ways of approaching the measurement of

academic motivation is to ask the question: "How much motivation
does this student have?" Such a question can be most easily answered
if academic motivation is conceived of as a single, general characteris-
tic of the individual.
When academic motivation is conceptualized as such a global or
general construct, an instrument intended to measure it need provide
only a single score for each respondent. Those who get high scores
Academic Motivations 3
presumably have more academic motivation and will be more suc-

cessful and satisfied in school than those who get lower scores.
Instruments which provide one score signifying how much motiva-
tion a student has are typically composed of items believed to differ-
entiate students high in motivation from those who are low in motiva-
tion. A student's score is determined by how many items he or she an-
swers in the same way that high motivation students answer. The key
to developing such an instrument lies in determining how to select
items which high motivation students will answer differently than low
motivation students. Investigators could use a rational approach to
constructing and selecting items which personal observation, previous
research, and theory suggest would be responded to differently by high
and low motivation groups, but, while previous research and theory
have been used to varying degrees in the development of item pools,
most researchers have tended to rely on a criterion-based approach in
the final selection and keying of items. The way in which high and low
motivation criterion groups are defined and identified is one of the
major differences among the various single general motivation meas-
ures.
Frymier (1970a) took a fairly direct approach to identifying high and
low motivation criterion groups. He had experienced junior high school
teachers rate the motivation levels of their own students, selecting
those students rated as extremely high in motivation and extremely low
in motivation as his criterion groups. He then submitted to these two
groups of students a set of items which, on the basis of certain theoret-
ical principles, he believed to be related to or appropriate for the study
of motivation. Items were retained and keyed - regardless of theoreti-
cal expectations - on the basis of reponses given by the two criterion
groups. Those items retained were used to form a scale called the
Junior Index of Motivation (JIM).
More commonly used than teachers' ratings as bases for specifying
criterion groups of high and low motivated students are what West and
Uhlenberg (1970) call "production measures." These investigators dis-
tinguish four kinds of production measures: grade point average; posi-
tion, status, awards; perseverance, risk-taking, and delay of gratifica-
tion; and voluntary activities. They point out that such measures have
the advantage of being relatively easily obtainable, unobstrusive, face
valid measures of motivation. However, such measures also typically
confound the effects of motivation with the effects of ability.
A relatively sophisticated use of a production measure as a criterion
was made by Farquhar and his associates (Farquhar, 1963). They
statistically defined groups of over- and underachieving eleventh grade
students by identifying those whose grade point average was one stan-
4 Moen and Doyle
dard error greater or less than would have been predicted by a stan-
dardized aptitude test. Among their uses of this bifurcation was the de-
velopment of a single general measure of academic motivation which
they called the Human Trait Inventory (HTI). They employed a com-
prehensive review of theories and research relating student charac-
teristics to academic achievement (Taylor, 1964) to develop a pool of
items for the HTI. Those items which discriminated between over- and
underachieving students were retained. On the assumption that "under-
and overachieving students differ significantly in motivation" (Taylor
and Farquhar, 1965, p. 186), scores on the HTI are presumed to reflect
differences in academic motivation. Three earlier instruments quite sim-
ilar to the HTI in design and purpose are cited as sources for many of
the items used in the initial item pool - Altus (1948), Gough (1953),
and McQuary and Truax (1955).
Whereas the JIM was developed expressly to measure academic
motivation, the HTI was developed as an instrument intended both to
predict academic achievement and to measure academic motivation.
Although not directly designed for this purpose, several instruments
predictive of behaviors which seem related to academic motivation
might also be considered as candidates for measures of academic moti-
vation. Southern California's Inventory of Study Methods and At-
titudes has been studied as a measure of motivation (Michael, Jones,
and Trembly, 1959). Probably the best-known single score instrument
developed to predict over- and underachievement is the Brown-
Holtzman Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) (Brown and
Holtzman, 1966); efforts have recently been made to develop subscales
for the SSHA (Khan and Roberts, 1975) so a single general scale for
measuring academic motivation may be distinguished from the other
factors the SSHA uses in predicting over- and underachievement. The
School Interest Inventory (Cottle, 1966) is an example of an instrument
developed to predict a motivation-related criterion other than over- and
underachieving; it purports to identify students who are likely to drop
out of high school early. It has also been used to predict academic
achievement (O'Shea, 1970).
Evaluation of the Single General Motivation Approach
Evaluation of an approach to measurement which rests on criterion-

keying must focus on the quality of the criterion. Blum and Naylor
(1968) describe two kinds of criterion problems: "criterion contamina-
tion" and "criterion deficiency." Criterion contamination, in the
present context, refers to whatever factors other than academic
motivation might produce different criterion scores. For example,

Frymier notes (1970b, p. 27):
The fact that research studies have repeatedly demonstrated that students'
grades are a function of achievement, congruence with teachers' values,
socioeconomic background, intelligence, social acceptance, and motivation,
among other things, tends to negate the usefulness of many existing meas-
ures of academic motivation which have been validated almost exclusively
against grade point average as a criterion.
Frymier's own criterion of teachers' ratings of motivation is open to

similar criticisms of contamination by factors such as the students' in-
telligence, personality, and compatibility with the teacher's values. Rat-
ings in general are subject to a host of sources of error, leading West
and Uhlenberg (1970, p. 55) to call them "notoriously unreliable."
Criterion deficiency points out the fact that, questions of contamina-
tion aside, any given criterion will probably reflect only a limited part
of academic motivation. A measure of motivation built on one criterion
may bear only a moderate relation to a measure built on a different cri-
terion. For example, Frymier's JIM scale, based on teachers' ratings,
correlated .44 - .57 with Farquhar's scales developed using over- and
underachievement (Frymier, 1970a).
Because of these problems of criterion contamination and criterion
deficiency, educators who use criterion-keyed single general motivation
measures would do well to keep interpretation of these measures very
close to the criterion itself and to be very cautious about investing the
measures with additional meaning. For example, it should not be as-
sumed that students who are predicted to overachieve will also be good
candidates for independent study programs (Taylor, 1964).
Now, assuming that criterion problems were to be resolved and that
general academic motivation was reliably and validly measured, what
use could be made of such information? The principal use - perhaps
the only use - would be to distinguish students who are likely to do
well and to enjoy school from those who are not and to make selection
and placement decisions accordingly. But this is a very limited applica-
tion. Many educators will want to know how they can affect student
motivation, by fostering change in the student or change in the edu-
cational environment. Information from single general measures, how-
ever, is of little use in directing change. The first reason for this is that
the conceptualization of motivation underlying single general measures
ignores the motivational contribution of the environment. Frymier
(1970a, p. 56) states this emphatically:
Throughout this research, motivation was assumed to be something which
came from within rather than something which came from without. That is,
motivation toward school was assumed to represent an internalized state of
6 Moen and Doyle
being which manifested itself outwardly in particular ways of behaving. In

other words, motivation was conceived of as that which a student had or
was rather than that which a teacher or other person did to him.
The second reason is that the undifferentiated nature of general
academic motivation gives no clues about how this internal state might
be changed.
To determine how to change students' motivational characteristics or
the motivational characteristics of the environment requires informa-
tion, not so much about how much general academic motivation stu-
dents have, but more importantly about how much they have of spe-
cific motivations. That is, diagnosis requires specificity.
SINGLE SPECIFIC MOTIVATIONMEASURES
Although the effects on educational progress and satisfaction of a

variety of motivations such as power (Cangemi, 1976) and affiliation
(Smith, 1972) have been investigated, three motivational variables are
singled out more often than any others for separate study: anxiety,
need for achievement, and intrinsic motivation.
The role of anxiety in education is a very important and complex
one. Traditional approaches to education have tended to employ anxi-
ety as a motivating force, with negative or avoidance motivation (e.g.,
fear of aversive consequences such as poor grades or the teacher's dis-
approval) considered a major means of getting students to work.
Studies which indicate that increased arousal can often facilitate per-
formance (Hebb, 1955) and those which suggest that grading perform-
ance leads to greater effort (Clark, 1969) would seem to offer support
for this approach. Those who favor more fc"progressive" approaches to
education argue that such negative motivation is not necessary for
learning, that it may, in fact, interfere with a student's performance.
Moreover, they argue, negative motivation most certainly makes edu-
cation a less enjoyable experience, destroying much of the student's
innate interest in learning. Research showing the greater effectiveness
of positive reinforcement over punishment in learning and demonstrat-
ing that too high a level of anxiety interferes with performance of com-
plex tasks are cited in favor of the "progressive" approaches by inves-
tigators such as Skinner (1954) and Gaudry and Spielberger (1971).
The same confusion about the role of anxiety that exists in education
appears in the area of anxiety measurement. Of the four paper-and-
pencil measures described in Gaudry and Spielberger' s 1971 review of
research on anxiety and educational achievement, two were developed
specifically for use in an educational context. One of these two, the
Test Anxiety Questionnaire (TAQ) (Mandler and Sarason, 1952) re-
fleets a view of anxiety which is similar to that of the "progressive"

educators: the more anxiety, the greater the interference with edu-
cational progress and satisfaction. The other measure, the Achievement
Anxiety Test (A AT) (Alpert and Haber, 1960), on the other hand,
seems more in line with the "traditional" approach. The A AT has two
separate scales. One of these measures anxiety which debilitates per-
formance, just as the TAQ does; the other measures anxiety which fa-
cilitates performance.
In addition to the two views of anxiety described above - anxiety as
either an evil to be eliminated or a potential tool to be used - Spiel-
berger, Gorsuch, and Lushene (1970) have distinguished between anxi-
ety as a trait and anxiety as a state. Consequently, it may be that,
rather than a single scale measuring the specific motivational variable
"anxiety," investigators will need to deal with several scales measuring
even more specific motivations, the different kinds of anxiety: facilitat-
ing, delibilitating, trait, and state.
Much of anxiety in school can be viewed as fear of failure. The con-
trasting motivation is hope of success, known variously as motivation
for success, need for achievement, nAch, or achievement motivation.
Since progress in education is often thought of - or at least measured
- in terms of achievement, the amount of achievement motivation a
student has, the "disposition to find gratification in successful competi-
tion with standards of excellence through one's own efforts" (Veroff,
McClelland, and Ruhland, 1975, p. 172), should have a large impact on
his or her educational progress and satisfaction. Atkinson's theory of
achievement motivation has been investigated by some as a possible
first step toward a theory of academic motivation (Maehr and Sjogren,
1971), while others already seem to equate achievement and academic
motivation (Chiu, 1968; Bower, Boyer, and Scheirer, 1970; and West
and Uhlenberg, 1970).
The popularity of achievement motivation among investigators, as
well as the difficulties involved in measuring it, can be seen in the ef-
fort that has been directed toward finding a simpler way to measure it
than the projective instrument originally used by McClelland, Atkinson,
Clark, and Lowell (1953) - Murray's Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT). Weinstein (1969), in examining the relationships between meas-
ures of achievement motivation, describes, in addition to the TAT, two
projective measures, the French Test of Insight (FTI) and the "Doo-
dles technique," as well as six self-report scales: one from the Ed-
wards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS), another from the Califor-
nia Personality Inventory (CPI), the Sherwood Achievement Scale
(SAS), the Achievement Risk Preference Scale (ARPS), the Test Anxi-
ety Questionnaire (TAQ), and the Success-Failure Inventory (SFI).
8 Moen and Doyle
Several scales which have been derived from several instruments (such
as Murray's Personality Inventory, the Berdie Adjective Check List,
Gough's Adjective Check List, the Interpersonal Check List, and the
Guilford-Martin Personnel Inventory) were mentioned by Clarke (1973)
in his review of measures of achievement motivation. Two scales he
singled out as particularly promising were the achievement scale from
Jackson's Personality Research Form and an unpublished instrument
developed by Mukherjee, the Sentence Completion Test. Schultz and
Pomerantz (1974), Wotruba and Price (1975), and Hamilton (1975) are
among those who have investigated two of the most recently developed
instruments, Mehrabian's Resultant Achievement Motivation Test and
Herman's Prestatic Motivation Test. As part of a project described ear-
lier, Farquhar (1963) developed two measures of achievement motiva-
tion intended to discriminate between under- and overachieving stu-
dents: The Situational Choice Inventory and the Preferred Job Charac-
teristics Scale.
A large part of the difficulty in constructing a generally accepted
measure of achievement motivation may be inherent in the nature of
the construct as presently defined. A number of investigators (Mitchell,
1961; Weinstein, 1969; Veroff, McClelland, and Ruhland, 1975;
Jackson, Ahmed, and Heapy, 1976) have suggested that achievement
motivation is not a unitary construct but a multidimensional one. If this
is so, investigators probably emphasize different aspects of the con-
struct in developing their instruments and, consequently, are actually
trying to measure somewhat different traits. Even when achievement
motivation is given its narrowest conceptualization - as motive to
achieve success (Ms) - it seems possible to distinguish dimensions
such as need and value components (Clarke, 1973), a social competi-
tion versus individual achievement component, and a group achieve-
ment versus individual achievement component (Veroff, McClelland,
and Ruhland, 1975). As the conceptualization broadens until it reaches
the point where "achievement motivation" includes any motivation
which leads to achievement, multidimensionality becomes more and
more of a problem. Instruments developed under such a broad concep-
tualization are no doubt closer to a measure of general motivation than
they are to a specific motivation measure. The benefits to be gained by
using a specific scale will probably be found only as work on achieve-
ment motivation follows a path similar to the one taken in research on
anxiety. This is the path which McClelland et al. started on at the be-
ginning when they distinguished hope of success and fear of failure, the
long hard road of identifying and measuring separately the different
motivational factors which are presently merged in the global construct
called "achievement motivation."
At least as popular among educators as achievement motivation is in-

trinsic motivation. The two constructs are closely related but the exact
nature of this relationship is not clear. Intrinsic motivation seems to be
the broader of the two constructs. Deci (1975, p. 107) asserts that
4'achievement motivation is a
special case of intrinsic motivation."
McClelland et al. (1953, p. 78), however, suggest that while intrinsic
motivation plays a role in the development of achievement motivation,
achievement motivation is not necesarily intrinsic: "Some of the plea-
sure that develops out of mastering tasks is undoubtedly intrinsic . . .
[but] stronger achievement motives probably require for most (though
not necessarily all) children some structuring of performance standards,
some demands by the parents and the surrounding culture." It may
even be that there is conflict between achievement motivation and in-
trinsic motivation (Caron, 1963). To the extent that achievement moti-
vation is outcome-oriented, it clashes with the process orientation of
intrinsic motivation.
Whatever other relationships may obtain between the two constructs,
attempts to develop a single specific measure of intrinsic motivation
have run into the same difficulty with multidimensionality as the at-
tempts to measure achievement motivation. McReynolds, in his 1971
review of methods of assessing intrinsic motivation first distinguishes
between two broad types of intrinsic motivation - commitment behav-
ior and innovative behavior - lamenting that measurement efforts
have pretty well left commitment behavior untouched. He then goes on
to state that a "highly important need is for a definitive conceptual and
empirical analysis of the different aspects of innovative behavior and
the interrelationships among them" (1971, p. 176).
McReynolds mentions three scales which were developed to attempt
a global assessment of the type of intrinsic motivation he calls innova-
tive: Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale, Garlington and Shimota's
Change Seeker Index, and Penny and Reinehr's Stimulus- Variation
Seeking Scale. Moderately high correlations among these scales suggest
that they are tapping the same motivational variable. This should not,
however, be construed as evidence that intrinsic motivation is, after
all, a unitary construct. Rather, it seems that all of these instruments
are measuring the same narrow aspect of innovative intrinsic motiva-
tion, an aspect which might be termed "external sensation-seeking."
An instrument designed to measure specific aspects of innovative in-
trinsic motivation, Pearson's Novelty Experiencing Scale, has four
subscales, three of which have low correlations with global measures of
intrinsic motivation. Only the External Sensation-seeking subscale cor-
related moderatly high with global measures. The three other scales
are: Internal Sensation-seeking, Internal Cognitive Experience-seeking,
10 Moen and Doyle
and External Cognitive Experience-seeking (Kohn and Annis, 1975).
The Ontario Test of Intrinsic Motivation is the newest measure of
the construct which McReynolds reviews, and he suggests that it may
be one of the best. It assesses three different aspects of intrinsic moti-
vation: Interest Areas, Stimulus Input, and Manner of Response. Ten
Interest Areas are distinguished: Literary, Scientific, Outdoor, Mechan-
ical, Computational, Clerical, Musical, Persuasive, Artistic, and Social
Service; three categories of Stimulus Input: Novelty, Ambiguity, and
Complexity; and three forms of Manner of Response: Consultation,
Observation, and Thinking. These form a 90-cell cube (10x3x3), with
each cell represented by one item in the instrument.
Evaluation of the Single Specific Motivation Approach
While the development of single general motivation measures typi-

cally rests on criterion-keying, the development of single specific
measures characteristically follows the construct validation paradigm,
owing largely to its explicit attempts to narrow the domain and specify
a network of interrelationships among variables.
Interpretability for these specific measures is thus largely a matter of
scale homogeneity, or, in Guilford's (1954) terminology, "univocal-
ness." But these measures generally fall quite short of the univocal
ideal. Less global and ambiguous than *'academic motivation" per se,
the specific measures are generally not yet specific enough to permit
unambiguous interpretation. The explicit criteria which aid interpreta-
tion of the single general measures receive considerably less attention
than they might in the development of specific measures.
Utility of single specific measures can be considerable, especially as
these measures become more and more specific. For example, specifi-
cation of motivations allows the distinction between internal and exter-
nal forces, as illustrated by the trait-state conceptualization of anxiety.
Progress can also be made toward diagnosing and operating upon stu-
dents' motivational characteristics (for example, Smith and Troth,
1975). Moreover the environment can be effectively analyzed for its
motivational effects (Gaudry and Spielberger, 1970; Day, Berlyne, and
Hunt, 1971).
There are some dangers in these prospects, however. Intensively in-
vestigating the antecedents and consequents of a particular specific
motivation brings with it the danger that individual differences within
and among students may be overlooked or obscured. If the focus of
one's effort is to change a particular motivational characteristic in a
student or to make the educational environment more compatible with
an existing specific student motivation, one may loose sight of the pos-
sibility that the particular motivation is not an integral part of what Ball
(1977) calls the student's "motivational style," that other, compensa-
tory, motivations may be operating. Study of a specific motivation in
isolation from other motivations may also limit understanding of how a
behavior is affected by motivations. Such was the situation described
by Atkinson and Birch (1974, p. 272), who reported that "Feather was
forced to the realization that one could not really derive a hypothesis
about who would be more or less persistent [on some task] without
making an explicit reference to the strength of the individual's motiva-
tion to undertake some alternative activity instead." Finally, the exclu-
sive study of a single specific motivation may also limit one's under-
standing of that motivation. Thus Atkinson, Lens, and O'Malley (1976,
p. 39) advocate examining a variety of motivational variables which af-
fect achievement-oriented activity in order to "provide a realistic
framework for judging how much of the variance in total strength of
motivation one should expect to account for in terms of a measure of n
Achievement, by itself, or Test Anxiety, by itself, or even a measure of
Resultant Achievement Motivation (n Achievement - Test Anxiety)."
Studying specific motivations within a context of a variety of other
motivations may help overcome some of these limitations. Multiple
motivation measures could provide such a context.
MULTIPLEMOTIVATIONMEASURES
A general motivation measure does not distinguish between different

motivational variables but treats all as having similar effects on edu-
cational progress and satisfaction. A specific motivation measure sin-
gles out a motivation which seems likely to have particularly important
effects. A multiple motivation measure distinguishes between a variety
of motivations so that their effects may be compared.
Murray's (1938) Psychological Insight Test, the Edwards Personal
Preference Schedule (1959), Jackson's (1967) Personality Research
Form, the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey (1960) Study of Values, Gough's
(1964) California Psychological Inventory, the Kuder Occupational In-
terest Survey (1970), and the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (1972)
are a few of the better known multiscale instruments which might be,
and have been, used to assess motivational variables. While these in-
struments have been shown to be useful for a variety of purposes, and
while they may contribute much to an understanding of academic moti-
vations, a fuller and more refined understanding of the motivations
which affect educational progress and satisfaction can probably be de-
rived from instruments designed specifically to assess academic motiva-
tions (e.g., Riechmann and Grasha, 1974).
12 Moen and Doyle
Measures constructed for contexts other than the educational one
typically concentrate on motivations less directly related to learning
than would be desirable for a measure of academic motivations. Mur-
ray's system of needs, for instance, upon which a number of instru-
ments have been based, emphasizes motivations associated primarily
with interpersonal relations. Although social motivations play a role in
education, the most important factors would seem to be those affecting
a person's satisfaction and success with processing various kinds of in-
formation and acquiring knowledge, skills, and understanding. Further,
such instruments often use much technical or evaluative terminology
inappropriate for many educational purposes.
The problems of selecting instruments which measure motivations
relevant to education might seem to lie exclusively with the multiple
motivation approach. Educators would not seek a measure of a single
specific motivation if they did not believe that motivation to be highly
relevant to the educational process. A more subtle form of relevance,
however, applies to specific motivation measures as well as to multiple
motivation measures. A motivation which is operative in one context
may not be active in another; motivations assessed outside the context
of educational variables may have little to say about what happens
within that context. Caron (1963), for example, in discussing anxiety
and achievement motivation - two motivational variables which
should have a large impact on educational progress and satisfaction -
questions the usefulness of trying to apply results from general meas-
ures of these motivations to the educational realm:
Accumulatedresearchin the Anxiety area . . . points to the conclusion that
measuresof generalanxiety such as the Taylor ManifestAnxiety scale are
less effective in predictingperformanceunderparticularstress conditions
(for example, test conditions)than measuresspecificallygermaneto these
conditions(for example, the Mandler-SarasonTest Anxiety Questionnaire).
It mightwell be the case, correspondingly,that a measureof a general mo-
tive to achieve is less adequateas a performancepredictorthan one which
assesses motive strengthfor the particularincentive under investigation(in
the present study academic achievementmotive strength).
A variety of multiscale instruments have been developed specifically

for assessing educationally relevant variables which are related in some
way to academic motivation.
The School Motivation Analysis Test (SMAT) (Cattell, Krug, and
Sweeney, 1970), surprisingly, in view of its title, should probably not
be considered one of the instruments specifically designed to assess
educationally relevant motivations. It is mentioned here both because
its title would seem to make it a likely candidate for such use and be-
cause it offers a provocative approach to measuring motivations. There
are other paper-and-pencil instruments which might be described as ob-
jective, but CatteH's four different objective devices are unique as

measures of motivation. They include: a measure of the utility which
various resources are seen as having, a word association test, an in-
formation test, and a measure of autistic distortion. Unfortunately, the
word " school" is, according to the manual, included in the title only to
indicate the age level at which the test is directed, not to indicate a
concentration on academic motivations. Furthermore, the choice of
scales does not seem to reflect an emphasis on educationally relevant
variables. For example, three of the sixteen motivations which Cattell
has distinguished in his work but did not include in SMAT - gregari-
ousness, acquisitiveness, and exploration - appear to be much more
educationally relevant than some of the ones he did include, such as
mating, narcissim, and fear. One scale which is directed toward
academic motivation, the sentiment to school scale, "represents the to-
tality of the teenager's interest in his school activities" (Cattell et al.,
1970, p. 10). It sounds as if a global or general measure of academic
motivation has been included in a multiscale measure of nonacademic
motivations.
Several multiple scale instruments which are concerned primarily
with assessing whatever factors affect educational progress and satis-
faction deal with motivations as one of several kinds of variables. The
Personal Values Inventory (Schlesser and Finger, 1969) provides 12
scores to be used in predicting academic achievement. With the focus
on predicting college achievement rather than on measuring motiva-
tions, five of the twelve scales assess clearly non motivational variables:
High School Self Report, Socioeconomic Status, Planning, Self-insight,
and Faking. The seven remaining scales are: Need for Achievement,
Direction of Aspirations, Peer Influence, Home Influence, Persistence,
Self-control, and the Persistence and Self-control two scales combined.
Brown and Holtzman (1966), in response to one of the major criticisms
of the Survey of Study Habits and Atitudes, namely "that it yielded a
single score which did not contain much information about the
strengths and weaknesses of an individual in specific areas" (Khan and
Roberts, 1975, p. 835), in 1965 revised the instrument. Using the judg-
ment of 15 experts, they classified items into four scales: Delay
Avoidance, Work Methods, Teacher Approval and Education Accept-
ance. Borow (1949), who developed his College Inventory of
Academic Adjustment specifically to aid counselors in identifying
problem areas, from the outset distinguished six rationally determined,
diagnostic categories: Curricular Adjustment, Maturity of Goals and
Level of Aspiration, Personal Efficiency, Study Skills and Practices,
Mental Health, and Personal Relations.
Farquhar and others (Farquhar, 1963), who, as earlier mentioned,
developed several single scale measures to differentiate between under-
14 Moen and Doyle
and overachieving students and thus assess academic motivation, com-
bined four of these instruments into a battery of tests called the M
Scales. Since a single overall score for predicting under- and over-
achievement is derived by combining their scores, the four original in-
struments could be considered as scales in one multiple motivation
measure. The four scales are: the Word Rating List, designed to assess
self-concept; the Human Trait Inventory, to assess personality traits
which have been found to be related to under- and overachievement;
and the Generalized Situational Choice Inventory and the Preferred Job
Characteristics Scale, to assess "the motivational preferences and oc-
cupational values of the hypothesized extremes in academic achieve-
ment motive."
The Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI) (Heist, Yonge, McConnell,
and Webster, 1968) was designed to identify and discriminate "types"
of students and to assess change primarily in regard to three dimen-
sions: intellectual versus nonintellectual values and interests, liberal
versus conservative attidues, and social-emotional adjustment charac-
teristics. The Intellectual Disposition Categories, which are intended to
reflect both the type and extent of commitment the student has to
learning, are formed by combining six of the more motivational of the
scales: Thinking Introversion, Theoretical Orientation, Estheticism,
Complexity, Autonomy, and Religious Orientation.
These instruments incorporate motivations as one of several kinds of
variables which affect or are affected by educational progress. Several
other instruments focus on a different outcome of academic motivation
- students' satisfaction with their educational experiences.
The College Student Satisfaction Questionnaire (CCSQ) (Starr, Betz,
and Menne, 1971) asks students about their satisfaction with five areas
of their educational experience: Working Conditions, Compensation
(work to reward ratio), Quality of Education, Social Life, and Recogni-
tion. The College Assessment Inventory (Reed, 1968) measures satis-
faction with the following six areas: Meaningfulness of daily college
tasks, relevance of college to the student's future goals, warmth of
interpersonal relations, academic challenge, importance of grades, col-
lege's implementation of selected educational objectives, college's con-
cern for the individual, and field of interest. The Transactional Analysis
of Personality and Environment (Pervin, 1967) has students use 52
semantic differential scales to rate six categories: My College, Self,
Students, Faculty, Administration, and Ideal College.
A number of instruments measure variables which clearly are a part
of academic motivation even though not specifically designated as
motivations. Asserting that "neither of the two most widely used inter-
est inventories, the Kuder and the Strong, seems particularly well
adapted to the counseling needs of college freshmen and sophomores"
(Baggaley, 1963, p. 41), Baggaley developed the Milwaukee Academic

Interest Inventory (MAII) to guide students in choosing their fields of
concentration. Items were scored for a particular field when the per-
centage of "yes" responses given by students who entered that field
was different (significant at the 10% level) from the percentage of
"yes" responses given by the total group of students. Interest indices
for six fields of concentration resulted from this criterion-keying proce-
dure: Physical Science, Healing Occupations, Behavioral Sciences,
Economics, Humanities-Social Studies, and Elementary Education. A
seventh index, Masculine Interests, was developed using differences in
the responses of men and women.
Morstain's Student Orientations Survey (SOS) investigates "stu-
dents' expressed attitudes regarding curricular-instructional policies,
their preferred modes of learning, student-faculty roles, and so on"
(Morstain, 1973, p. 2). Factor analysis of a pool of items "undiffer-
entiated as to type or scale" (Morstain, 1973, p. 4) suggested the use of
five dimensions to describe student orientations: Purpose, Process,
Power, Peer Relations, and Public Position. Each dimension contrib-
utes two scales to the SOS, one for the pole deemed to represent a
"preparatory" orientation to education and one for the pole represent-
ing an "exploratory" orientation. Listed in order of the dimensions,
and grouped into the two broad orientations, the ten scales are:
Achievement, Assignment Learning, Assessment, Affiliation, and Af-
firmation for the preparatory orientation; and Inquiry, Independent
Study, Interaction, Informal Association, and Involvement for the ex-
ploratory orientation.
Where Baggaley and Morstain emphasized empirical procedures in
developing their scales, Riechmann and Grasha (1974) stressed the im-
portance of theory and the rational approach in developing the
Grasha-Riechmann Student Learning Style Scales (GRSLSS). Each of
six response styles - Independent, Dependent, Participant, Avoidant,
Collaborative, and Competitive - was defined using three classroom
dimensions: students' attitudes toward learning, view of teachers
and/or peers, and reactions to classroom procedures. Thus a student
with, for instance, the Dependent style "learns only what is required,"
"sees teachers and peers as sources of structure and support," and
"wants to be told what to do."
Considerable attention has been directed toward one subclass of
academic motivations - motivations for attending school. Many inves-
tigators such as Iffert (1957) and Cohen and Guthrie (1966) have stud-
ied students' motivations for attending school. To measure these moti-
vations, Dole and Digman (1967) developed an instrument, Reasons for
Going to College. Using this instrument they identified thirteen factors:
Social Reason, Conformity, Curiosity, Vocational Reason, Academic
16 Moen and Doyle
Value, Material Value, Altruistic Value, School Influence, Experience,

Avocational Influence, Science Interest, Humanities Interest, and
Verbal Interest.
Relatively little systematic research, however, has been directed to-
ward examining the broad range of motivational variables which might
affect educational progress and satisfaction. The instrument most
commonly regarded as measuring a relatively comprehensive set of
academic motivations may be the Stern Activities Index (SAI) (Stern,
1970). Used in conjunction with the College Characteristics Index
(CCI), it is intended to indicate which colleges are most likely to meet
different students' needs. The SAI provides scores for 30 needs, 12
scores derived from factor analysis of the needs scale scores, and 4
higher order factor scores. The four higher order factor scores are:
Achievement Orientation, Dependency Needs, Emotional Expression,
and Educability. The twelve factor scores are: Self-assertion, Audac-
ity-Timidity, Intellectual Interests, Motivation, Applied Interests,
Orderliness, Submissiveness, Closeness, Sensuousness, Friendliness,
Expressiveness-Constraint, and Egoism- Diffidence. The 30 needs are
drawn directly from Murray's system. It has already been argued that
Murray's system of needs may not be the most useful basis for a
measure of academic motivations. Direct reliance on this system in de-
veloping the SAI, including use of Murray's terminology, and failure to
phrase items in terms of educational variables may limit the SAI's use-
fulness as a tool for understanding academic motivations.
Specifically educational variables and items have, however, been
used in the development of several instruments. Shack (1968) em-
phasized the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in
his attempt to develop a multiscale measure of academic motivations.
His work thus bears some similarity to the specific motivation ap-
proach. But, contrary to the usual strategy with intrinsic motivation,
Shack used the intrinsic and extrinsic need systems as categories for
grouping many distinguishable motivations and, further, asserted that
motivations in both categories contribute to educational progress and
satisfaction. After using the judgment of experts to ensure that half of
the items in his Epistemic Orientation Inventory (EPI) would represent
an intrinsic orientation and half would represent an extrinsic one, he
factor analyzed the item intercorrelation matrix, identifying ten motiva-
tional variables which he proposed as a basis for developing motiva-
tional scales: Grade Dependence, Independent-informal Scholar, Fu-
ture Orientation, Curiosity Indulgence, Self-exploration, Constriction
Resistance, Pressure Reactive, Ambivalent, Professional Constrictive,
and Intellectual Self-disciplinary.
Chiu's (1968) view that 'the nature of academic motivation is a
complex of relatively independent dimensions with different im-
plications for education than a unitary construct" (p. 162) is clearly re-
vealed in his attempt to develop a multiscale measure of the motiva-
tions of high school students. Somewhat analogously to Shack's ap-
proach with intrinsic motivation, Chiu deals with a motivational con-
struct which is typically treated as unitary - achievement motivation
- and seeks to identify a number of distinct motivational variables
which comprise this construct. Rather than factor analyze a pool of
variables which have all been judged to represent achievement motiva-
tion, however, he follows the path of Taylor and Farquhar (1965) in re-
viewing the literature on academic achievement to find what different
motivational variables affect student performance. Identifying sixteen
student characteristics which the literature suggested were likely to af-
fect academic achievement, Chiu developed a scale for each charac-
teristic by initially using personal judgment to select items adapted
from other instruments and then eliminating items which failed to cor-
relate significantly with the total scale score. Factor analyzing an 18 x
18 intercorrelation matrix composed of scores from the sixteen scales
and two criterion tests (aptitude and achievement) Chiu concluded that
academic achievement motivation is composed of five factors. The six-
teen scales used in Chiu's Activity, Attitude, and Interest Inventory
are: Curiosity Motives; Cognitive Motives (Intellectual Curiosity); At-
titudes toward School, Teachers and Courses; Need for Social Rein-
forcements; Study Habits and Methods; Concentration and Attention;
Level of Aspiration, Goals, and Purposes; Need for Achievement (So-
cial Competition); Need for Achievement (Meeting Self-imposed Re-
quirements); Persistance; Fear of Failure; Test Anxiety; Feelings about
Past Experiences in School Performance; Reactions to Achievement
Pressure; Self-Concept; and Values for Academic Achievement, Educa-
tion, and Knowledge. The five motivational factors derived from scores
on these sixteen variables are: Positive Orientation to Learning, Need
for Social Recognition, Curiosity, Motive to Avoid Failure, and Reac-
tion to Expectation.
Currently under development is a multiple motivation measure called
the Academic Motivations Inventory (AMI) (Moen and Doyle, 1977).
Guided by a cubic representation of academic motivation which em-
phasizes the interaction of student and environmental characteristics,
these investigators used literature reviews and interviews with stu-
dents, instructors, and counseling and clinical psychologists to prepare
items for their inventory. The dimensions of the cubic model are Moti-
vational Characteristics of Individuals (MCIs), Motivational Charac-
teristics of the Environments (MCEs), and hypothesized Motivational
Effects of the interaction of MCIs and MCEs. The MCI dimension in-
cludes three main components; Material Motivations (further divided
into Economic and Physical), Psychological Motivations (Self-Esteem,
18 Moen and Doyle
Mental Stimulation, and Conscientiousness), and Social Motivations
(Esteem and Social Interaction). The MCE dimension is divided into
Knowledge Acquired, Process of Acquiring Knowledge, and Assess-
ment of Knowledge Acquisition. The hypothesized motivational effects
are Progress Facilitation, Progress Interference, Positive Affect, and
Negative Affect. Item analyses and factor studies of successive ver-
sions of the inventory have produced sets of first- and second-order
scales which seem reasonably well to reflect the important elements of
the model.
Evaluation of the Multiple Motivation Approach
Multiple motivation measures are, in effect, collections of specific

motivation measures. In this fact lie both the strengths and the weak-
nesses of the multiple motivation approach.
The utility of multiple motivation measures is the same as the utility
of single measures, but with more dimensions of motivation. In addi-
tion to providing this greater breadth, the multiple measures help over-
come the three previously discussed limitations of the single motivation
approach. That is, the motivational profiles provided by multiple meas-
ures can promote attention to individual student differences so that dif-
ferent motivational patterns for different students can be examined, and
stronger motivations which may compensate for weaker ones in an in-
dividual can be noted. Moreover, multivariate prediction, which is
likely to be more explanatory than univariate prediction, is facilitated
when a variety of measures are taken simultaneously. Finally, the mul-
tiple motivation approach allows for more thorough examination of the
relationships among different motivations and the correspondingly
greater understanding of each.
As with the single specific measures, the interpretation of multiple
motivation measures eschews explicit criteria in favor of construct
validation procedures. Multivariate prediction and covariation analysis
procedures (see, for example, Weiss, 1976) contribute to developing
maximally homogenous and independent scales and constructs. But
many multivariate procedures require a large subject-to-variable ratio,
and so each motivation has to be measured by very few items unless
enormous numbers of subjects*are available for the development sam-
ple. Such small numbers of items, whether occasioned by the con-
straints of multivariate procedures or by the requirements of economy
and efficiency, do not permit so complete and reliable a measurement
of motivation as might be possible with a collection of separate single
measures. On the other hand, the breadth and convenience of the mul-
tiple measures often makes them more informative and economical.
SUMMARY
This conceptual review of measures of academic motivationdistin-
guishes three principaltypes of instrumentson the basis of their under-
lying notions about academic motivation:single general motivation
measures, single specific measures, and multiplemeasures.
Examinationof the utility and interpretabilityof informationpro-
duced by these differentkinds of instrumentsindicates that each kind
has its own peculiarstrengthsand weaknesses. Many of the differences
among kinds bear on what Cronbach(1970) described as the
"
"bandwidth-fidelity dilemma, namely that greater breadthof meas-
urementis achieved at the expense of lessened precision, greaterpreci-
sion at the cost of narrowedbreadth. Single specific measuresseem
most likely to provide reliable scores, but limited in their coverage of
the domain, multiplemeasuresto provide broadercoverage but less re-
liable scores, with single general measures somewhere in between.
The choice of one kind of measure over another cannot be a simple
one. Indeed, that choice is reminiscentof the continuingdebate in the
ability domain over whethergeneral intelligence measures, measuresof
specific abilities, or multipleaptitudetests are "best."
The reasonableconclusion may have to be that some trade-offwill
always be necessary - breadthversus precision, criterion-keyedver-
sus construct validated, convenience and economy versus relevance
and coverage - and that the purpose to be served will determinethe
kind of instrumentto be used.
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Measures of Academic Motivation: A Conceptual Review

Author(s): Ross Moen, Kenneth O. Doyle and Jr.

MEASURES OF ACADEMIC MOTIVATION:

Ross Moen and Kenneth O. Doyle, Jr., Measurement Services

This review examines the measurement of academic motivation in college students. It

Key words: academic motivation; motivation

Motivation is important to students' progress and satisfaction in col-

SINGLE GENERAL MOTIVATIONMEASURES

One of the most common ways of approaching the measurement of

presumably have more academic motivation and will be more suc-

Evaluation of the Single General Motivation Approach

Evaluation of an approach to measurement which rests on criterion-

motivation might produce different criterion scores. For example,

Frymier's own criterion of teachers' ratings of motivation is open to

being which manifested itself outwardly in particular ways of behaving. In

SINGLE SPECIFIC MOTIVATIONMEASURES

Although the effects on educational progress and satisfaction of a

fleets a view of anxiety which is similar to that of the "progressive"

At least as popular among educators as achievement motivation is in-

Evaluation of the Single Specific Motivation Approach

While the development of single general motivation measures typi-

A general motivation measure does not distinguish between different

A variety of multiscale instruments have been developed specifically

jective, but CatteH's four different objective devices are unique as

(Baggaley, 1963, p. 41), Baggaley developed the Milwaukee Academic

Value, Material Value, Altruistic Value, School Influence, Experience,

Evaluation of the Multiple Motivation Approach

Multiple motivation measures are, in effect, collections of specific

Gaudry, E., and Spielberger, C. D. Anxiety and Educational Achievement.

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