Assessing Motivation of Secondary School Students: An Analysis of Promotion and Prevention Orientations as Measured by the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire

Abstract

Measuring human motivation requires understanding the outcomes individuals value and the strategies they prefer to employ to attain them. Knowledge of promotion and prevention, two pivotal motivation orientations, provide key information regarding these aspects. The Regulatory Focus Questionnaire, which measures these two independent constructs, was validated using data provided by university students and alumni of an elite U.S. university. Thus, little is known whether this instrument provides reliable and valid measures of promotion and prevention in a population of younger respondents from a different culture. To bridge this gap, the study employed data collected from three independent large samples of New Zealand secondary school students and used the jigsaw piecewise technique in combination with confirmatory factor analyses. Findings show that, in this population, items in the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire measure promotion and prevention as theoretically distinct constructs.