The purpose of this study was to make scale for measuring academic amotivation of adolescents. And It was to find out if the patterns of amotivated adolescents were qualitatively distinct rather than appearing as one of a plurality of patterns; if they were qualitatively different, then these differences would be examined through further exploration.
First, for the theoretical frame for the scale development, amotivation, learned helplessness, the expectancy-value model was based for scale for academic amotivation. Next, open-ended survey was administered to 220 middle school students and data of 210 valid questionnaires were analyzed. Based on the data collected through an open-ended questionnaire, the items that explain the organizing factors of the scale were extracted. Their content validity was analyzed and the pre-scale for motivation for academic amotivation was established. Second, a questionnaire consisting of the 23 items was administered to 200 middle school students to confirm the appropriateness of the items and the organizing factors for scale and data of 200 valid questionnaires were analyzed. Lastly, the final version of academic amotivation was settled. The scale developed through the stage of the research included 6 subcategories which included ‘Lack of Intrinstic Value’, ‘Lack of Utility Value’, ‘Perceived Cost’, ‘Lack of Ability ’, ‘Lack of Effort’, ‘Social Pressure’. A total of 18 items were included to measure these factors.
The third stage was to validate the developed scale. First, the main survey was conducted with 720 middle and high school students and data of 697 valid questionnaires ware analyzed. The goodness of fit and reliability of the scale was confirmed by analyzing the items in the final version of the scale. Then, the construct validity of the scale’s factor structure was analyzed. By conducting a correlation analysis on motivations for academic amotivation and related variables, the criterion-related validity was tested to high school students. Lastly, the cross validity was verified to find out if the scale can be generalized. Through these analyses, the scale with 6 subcategories and 18 items were found to be appropriate and valid. Also, all subcategories and items were considered reliable. Academic amotivation was highly correlated with self-determinated motivation. Regarding achievement goal orientation, it was negatively correlated with mastery goal orientation, and it had a positive correlation with performance-avoidance goal orientation. Thus, the correlation with the variables used for criterion-related validation was confirmed which proves the validity of the scale for academic motivation. The goodness of fit index for the developed scale was reviewed to confirm that it is a scale that can be generalized for both middle and high school students.
The forth stage, by applying latent profile analysis to 152 middle school students(highly amotivated students), four distinct latent profiles of amotivation were found: will group, lack of effort group, helplessness group and lack of value group. Students who had lower mastery goal were more likely to be helpless group compared to the other three groups. Students who had lower performace-avoidance goal were more likely to be helplessness group compared to the other three groups. Students who had high performance goal were more likely to be will group, lack of effort group compared to helplessness group. Students who had high academic achievement were more likely to be will group and value lack group compared to helplessness group. Students who had lower perceived parents'' autonomy support were more likely to be helplessness group compared to the other three groups.
This study is significant for Korean students to develop an scale for academic amotivation through theoretical consideration and development of a basic questionnaire based on the data collected from adolescents. This study would contribute to the explaining of the research on amotivation. Various amotivational factors included in this scale provide concrete information about the type of students who are amotivated.
Therefore the scale for academic amotivation, which was developed and verified to be valid in the present study, will be used to establish distinct intervention strategies. Futhermore, this scale is expected to be a useful tool for understand amotivation problems of students who have a hard time in learning.