Development of mathematics motivation scale: A preliminary exploratory study with a focus on secondary school students

Abstract

The motivation for learning mathematics is an essential factor in predicting the performance of secondary school students. Students who are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to learn mathematics generally demonstrate higher performance than others who are not motivated. However, a properly designed instrument for the measurement of this construct has been sparsely reported in the literature. The present study is carried out to develop an instrument of high psychometric properties for measuring the construct. The study involved 439 students randomly selected across secondary schools using a survey research design. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to determine the factor structure and distribution of items in each of the mathematics motivation subscales. The factors are extracted using principal component analysis, and the extracted factors are rotated using varimax. The analysis results in a final 24-item mathematics motivation scale, which contained five subscales with around half of the total variance explained of 48.99% explained variance. A high-reliability coefficient was found for the whole instrument with some empirical evidence of construct validity. The concise instrument is recommended for assessing the motivation of secondary school students, and further studies are recommended for its confirmation of factor structures in independent samples.