A Potential Indicator of College Motivation

Abstract

College success depends on a number of factors; of these intelligence, interest, and motivation seem to be most important. There are a number of effective scholastic aptitude tests for selecting potential students. Likewise, reasonably good interest tests are prevalent. However, tests of motivation are not available. Several years ago we developed a simple instrument (Tesc X ) utilizing three concepts relative to motivation: ( a ) motivation involves behavior directed toward a goal, ( b ) behavior should not be disrupted even if trivial aspects are involved, ( c ) behavior should persist even when frustration results. Test X was a one page passage on child psychology. The words were crowded together without punctuation, capitalization, or spacing. Ss were allowed 10 min. to read the passage. Then they were instructed to run a vertical line through each a with a red pen, each o with a blue pen, and each i with a green pen, each task being performed separately for 10 min. Each a, e, or i unmarked and each incorrectly marked letter constituted an error. Prediction of college success was the main use to which the instrument was put, and a predictive validity procedure was employed with grade-point average as the criterion. A preliminary trial of Tesc X was conducted with 10 students whose scholastic motivational characteristics were known because of previous contact in one or more classes. The correlation between score on Test X and grade point average was .52, which was not significantly different from zero because of the small number of Ss. However, two Ss who were considered as being strongly motivated and two whose scholastic motivation was poor performed in the predicted manner. The following year Test X was adrmnistered to 5 5 incoming freshmen at a small Eastern liberal arts college (College A) . The product-moment correlations between Test X scores, ACE scores, and grade-point averages (at the end of the freshman year) were: X-GPA, .32; ACE-GPA, .36; X-ACE, .24'. These results suggested that the ACE and Tesc X predicted grade-point average equally well and that there was no overlap between the two. The multiple correlation of ACE and X with GPA was .43, indicating that the two would predict more effectively than either alone.