Development and validation of the brief regulation of motivation scale

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and establish evidence supporting the validity of a brief scale designed to assess college students' regulation of motivation. This scale, titled the Brief Regulation of Motivation Scale, is more manageable to administer and intuitive to interpret compared to previous lengthy multidimensional scales. With a sample of 396 college students, multiple sources of validity evidence were examined. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses supported two separate factors subsequently titled regulation of motivation and willpower. The patterns of correlations between the two factors and critical aspects of self-regulated learning (e.g., motivation, learning strategies) were consistent with theoretical expectations. Only the regulation of motivation factor successfully predicted students' reported use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and their procrastination. Overall, we found stronger support for the validity of regulation of motivation scale, by itself, as an indicator of students' general tendency to self-regulate their motivation.