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Motivational profiles and achievement: A prospective study testing potential mediators

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Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine students’ motivational profile at the beginning of a College program and to test whether these profiles were associated with students’ achievement through their relations with behaviors adopted during the semester. A prospective design with two time points of data collection was conducted in first-year students enrolled in a French University. Motivations were assessed at the beginning of the semester (510 participants at Time 1), and study strategies and temporal resources devoted to academics at the end of it (301 participants at Time 2). Administrative records were used to check for persistence in the program and to assess achievement. Cluster analyses revealed five distinct profiles: additive; self-determined; moderate; low; non self-determined. Furthermore, motivational profile was linked to final grade through the partial mediation of the percentage of classes attended. As a whole, students with a self-determined profile demonstrated the best academic adjustment, whereas those with a low or non self-determined profile displayed the poorest outcomes.

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Notes

  1. No tool validated in the educational setting includes integrated regulation. On the other hand, some scales assess amotivation (Vallerand et al. 1989), whereas others only focus on intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation (e.g., Ryan and Connell 1989).

  2. Four papers explored motivational profiles in educational settings but were not included in the current literature review because the variables entered in the analyses do not correspond strictly speaking to the motivational continuum described in SDT: Ntoumanis (2002), Liu et al. (2009) and Mouratidis and Michou (2011) included variables other that regulations in the profiles; Hayenga and Corpus (2010) used intrinsic and extrinsic scales including other constructs than behavioral regulations.

  3. In this section, the labels used to describe the various motivational profiles are sometimes different from those adopted by the authors in their original articles. However, in order to compare the results obtained in the various samples, it was deemed necessary to select a single name for similar patterns. A summary of the clusters observed in the five published articles in education is provided in the “Appendix”.

  4. Of course, there is no way of knowing whether the same profiles would have emerged if the authors had run the same analysis with standardized scores; we just want to point out here the difficulty to compare results from different studies when the profiles are not described in terms of standardized scores.

  5. Even if some classes are given in small groups, the grouping of the students varies from class to class, and a large part of them are given for the entire cohort of students of the same year. Thus, it cannot be considered that data are nested in hierarchical levels according to fix, small groups.

  6. This represents a normal range, considering that students who have no delay in their academic career can begin university during their 18th year, and that young individuals sometimes undertake such program after or in parallel with an early professional experience. Also, it is expected for females to be under-represented in a Science Department.

  7. Similar conclusions have been drawn in the athletic domain regarding bounds between motivational profiles and performance. Indeed, an additive profile has been shown to be at best associated with results equivalent than moderate profiles (Gillet et al. 2009) or to be linked with poorer match results (Gillet and Berjot 2009).

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the Faculty of Human and Environmental Sciences in the University of La Reunion. The authors are particularly grateful to Pierre Leroyer, Dean of the Faculty, and to administrative services of the Faculty.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory Epsylon “Dynamics of Human Abilities and Health Behavior” (EA 4556), University Montpellier 1, 4 Boulevard Henri IV, 34 000, Montpellier, France

    Julie Boiché & Yannick Stephan

  2. Laboratoire “Sport et Environnement Social”, University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble 1, France

    Yannick Stephan

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  1. Julie Boiché
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  2. Yannick Stephan
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Correspondence to Julie Boiché.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 Motivational profiles in education
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Boiché, J., Stephan, Y. Motivational profiles and achievement: A prospective study testing potential mediators. Motiv Emot 38, 79–92 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-013-9361-6

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