Changes in Motivational Beliefs Among First-year Engineering Students: Relations to Academic Achievement and Retention Status

Abstract

Expectancy-value theory has long been used to explain students’ academic choices and achievement. Expectations for success and subjective task values are two main components of expectancy-value theory. We focused on three components of subjective task value in the current study: judgments of interest in a domain (interest), judgments of the domain’s meaningfulness or consistency with one’s identity (attainment value), and anticipated affective drawbacks of engaging in a domain (perceived psychological cost value). Research is needed to examine if and how perceived task value for engineering changes over time and whether those changes influence both achievement and retention in engineering. We hypothesized that increases in interest and attainment value, and decreases in perceived psychological cost value, would be associated with higher academic achievement among undergraduates in engineering and with retention (maintaining enrollment in the college of engineering the following year). Participants in the current study included first-year students from an urban metropolitan university enrolled in a school of engineering (n = 376, 21.8% female) in Fall 2013. Participants completed a self-report survey assessing their motivational beliefs twice during the first semester (Time 1 [T1]: first week of the semester; Time 2 [T2]: thirteenth week of the semester). Interest in engineering was measured by a single item. A five-item scale was used to measure attainment value (AV; internal consistency: αT1 = .84, αT2 = .91; sample item: “It is important for me to be a person who reasons like an engineer.”). A four-item scale was used to measure one component of perceived cost value: psychological cost value (PCV; internal consistency: αT1 = .61, αT2= .70; sample item: “I am concerned that I won't be able to handle the stress that might go along with my engineering major.”). Academic achievement was measured by first semester overall GPA. A linear regression was conducted to determine if changes in motivational beliefs predicted academic achievement after controlling for general academic ability (ACT composite score). Change scores were calculated for each of the three independent variables by subtracting Time 2 values from Time 1 values. Standardized coefficients represent the association of each independent variable with GPA. Results suggested that changes in these beliefs (interest, attainment value, and perceived psychological cost value) were statistically significantly associated with student academic achievement, consistent with our hypotheses. Specifically, increases in interest in engineering and attainment value for engineering were associated with higher GPA. In contrast, a decrease in perceived psychological cost value (i.e., worrying less about what it means to do poorly in engineering) was associated with higher GPA. We conducted a logistic regression to examine how changes in these task values predicted retention status the following year. After controlling for academic ability (ACT composite score), changes in interest significantly predicted one-year retention status of the participating engineering students.