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It was the purpose of this study to investigate whether selected motivational variables significantly differentiate levels of academic performance of highly-abled adolescents beyond traditionally utilized ability measures and achievement records.
From Atkinson's (1964) achievement motivation theory and Weiner's (1972) attribution model, three sets of variables were studied--resultant achievement motivation, causal attributions, and goal orientation.
Correlation coefficients were determined between each of the three variable sets and GPA for all students, and for subjects divided by sex and by class. Multiple regression analysis was completed to determine if some combination of resultant achievement motivation, attributions, and goals would significantly add to predicting GPA.
Subjects were 216 intellectually highly-abled girls and boys from a lab high school of the University of Illinois. All subjects were administered four instruments: Prestatie Motivatie Test (1970), Achievement Anxiety Test (1960), Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire (1965), and a goal instrument developed by the investigator.
Results indicated that for subjects as a total group, for both sexes, and for several classes, need to achieve (nAch) was inversely related to GPA. This widespread result is contradictive of theory. However, supporting theory, both debilitating anxiety (DA) and facilitating anxiety (FA) were significantly related to GPA for all subjects, for both sexes, and for lower grade students. Of the few sex differences found with attribution data, girls generally displayed negative relationships between attributions for academic success and GPA, while boys displayed positive relationships. Analyses of the goals data yielded few significant relationships. When multiple regression analyses were completed for all variables, nAch was the strongest predictor variable, followed by DA and FA.
Replication of this study is undoubtedly warranted, particularly with suggested variations in composition of subjects and with measures utilized.
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