A Study of the Relationship between Familial Factors and Academic Motivation and Achievement in High School Students

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Educational psychologists, nowadays, are more concerned about the students who are motivated in learning and interested in achieving their academic goals. Academic motivation and achievement are considered as primary indicators of students’ learning process and outcomes. This study aimed to know the relationship between the most important familial factors (e.g., parental education, parental occupation, family type, monthly household income, sibling’s achievement) with students’ academic motivation and achievement. One hundred and eighty high school students, age ranging from 13 to 16 years (M = 14.20, SD = .960), at eighth through tenth grade, were selected from six high schools through purposive sampling method, from Chittagong, Bangladesh. A Bangla version of ‘Academic Motivation Questionnaire’ (Fatematuzzohra et al., 2010), originally developed by Vallerand et al. (Can J Behav Sci 21(3):323–349, 1989. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0079855), was used to pursue the study. The result showed that all of the familial factors except the family type had significant effects on both students’ academic motivation and achievement scores. A significant positive correlation was found between students’ academic achievement and academic motivation scores (r = .339, p < .01). All of the familial factors were significant in explaining students’ academic achievement as well as their academic motivation. These factors combinedly explained 57.5% of the variance in students’ academic achievement (R2 = .575, F(13, 166) = 17.281, p < .01) and explained 30.5% of the variance in students’ academic motivation (R2 = .305, F(13, 166) = 5.614, p < .01). Implications for understanding the relationship between familial factors and academic motivation and achievement are discussed.