Validation of Motivational Regulation Strategies for Korean Elementary, Middle, and High School Students

Abstract

This study investigates the possibility of utilizing motivational regulation strategies for elementary through high school students using a motivational regulation scale originally developed for US college students by Wolters (The 11th International Conference on Education Research. New Educational paradigm for learning and instruction, Seoul, South Korea, 2010) and Wolters and Benzon (J Exp Edu 8(2):199–221, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973 , 2013). Of primary concern were questions whether the scale would work in a very different culture and educational system and whether it could be legitimately expanded from original validation efforts for college and high school students to Korean children attending upper primary school levels. Six correlated factors were identified and corroborated across elementary, middle, and high school students using multidimensional multiple group confirmatory factor analysis. With relatively minor exceptions, this validation study indicates that the questions posed about different cultures and age groups could be answered in the affirmative: Wolters’s (The 11th International Conference on Education Research. New Educational paradigm for learning and instruction, Seoul, South Korea, 2010) and Wolters and Benzon (J Exp Edu 8(2):199–221, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973 , 2013) motivational regulation scale can be used for the three age classifications of Korean students and could be used as a tool interrogating popular motivation regulation strategies across three school levels.