Studying for the sake of others: the role of social goals on academic engagement

Abstract

Much of the research on achievement goal theory has focused on the roles of mastery and performance goals in academic engagement, thus the role of other goals such as social goals has mostly been neglected. The aim of this research was to investigate the effects of different kinds of social goals (affiliation, approval, concern, responsibility and status goals) on the different facets of academic engagement. A total of 1147 Filipino secondary school students answered questionnaires assessing their social goals, achievement goals and academic engagement. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed to investigate the effects of social goals on academic engagement after controlling the effects of mastery and performance goals. Results indicate that certain kinds of social goals are also important predictors of academic engagement. We recommend that researchers consider investigating social goals that might be more salient in cross-cultural settings instead of focusing exclusively on mastery and performance goals.