Abstract
Building on achievement goal approach and self-determination theory (SDT), we propose a concise process model of achievement goal striving within academic staff members working at universities. We investigate this model in a sample of 107 academic staff members, who we questioned twice a day over the course of 2 weeks resulting in 1653 measurement occasions. Using two-level structural equation modeling, we found that substantial amounts of variance in situated achievement goals could be attributed to personal goal orientations. Life aspirations indirectly predicted the general strength of situated achievement goal striving via personal goal orientations. Finally, the situational satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness was differentially predictive for fluctuations in situated achievement goal striving, which in turn predicted situational intrinsic work motivation and work engagement. Our research ties achievement goal approach more closely to SDT and delivers a first outlook on the importance of working conditions in academia for goal setting processes and vocational motivation.
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Notes
While this clear classification of achievement goals in terms of SDT may be intuitively fitting, some researchers might also consider it simplified or even controversial. More specifically, Vansteenkiste et al. (2014) have prominently claimed that achievement goals could both be adopted for intrinsic or extrinsic reasons regardless of goal content. However, the result pattern of empirical studies on this matter indicated that some reasons were more prominent within certain goal types: for example, Gaudreau (2012) found that learning goals were more often adopted due to intrinsic reasons than performance goals. While this pattern was not present in a more recent study by Michou et al. (2014), the researchers found that performance approach goals were more strongly associated to extrinsic reasons than learning goals. In sum, the empirical evidence support our assumptions that learning goals can be considered as rather intrinsic goals and performance goals as rather extrinsic goals, even though it remains possible that reasons behind achievement goals may vary to some degree between situations (see especially Vansteenkiste et al. 2014 regarding empirical support for this notion).
The original scale also included the subscale Health indicating intrinsic life aspirations. However, Klusmann et al. (2005) found that this subscale could be characterized as an intrinsic as well as an extrinsic life aspiration. Thus, we decided to exclude this particular subscale from our analyses due to its high ambiguity.
The pretest sample consisted of 126 members of various universities’ academic staff (65.9% female, M Age = 31.9 years; SD = 6.96 years). The participants reported working 40.26 h/week on average (SD = 44.83 h/week). The participants were predominantly doctoral candidates (84.1 and 15.9% post-docs).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Caroline Tremble for her valuable services in language editing. Furthermore, we want to thank all academic staff members that participated in our study for the invested time and effort.
Funding
This study was funded by a grant of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; DFG) to Oliver Dickhäuser (Grant Number DI 929 5-1) and Markus Dresel (Grant Number DR 454/8-1).
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Janke, S., Dickhäuser, O. A situated process model of vocational achievement goal striving within members of the academic staff at university. Motiv Emot 42, 466–481 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9657-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9657-z