Measuring states goal involvement in specific achievement situations: Development and validation of a 6-goal questionnaire

H. Le Bars , A. Teboul (1, 2) , A. Pineau , C. Gernigon (1, 2)

1 EuroMov - Euromov
2 UM - Université de Montpellier

The latest refinements of achievement goal theory (Elliot, Murayama, & Pekrun, 2011) led to distinguish six goals: task-approach, self-approach, other-approach, task-avoidance, self-avoidance, and other-avoidance. A French questionnaire measuring these goals in terms of motivational orientations (general tendencies) has been recently developed by Mascret, Elliot, and Cury (2014). However, given the proximal role of states of goal involvement in the determination of motivational patterns, there is a need to measure such states as they are here-and-now activated. Hence, the present research aimed to develop and validate a French questionnaire that measures states of involvement in the six goals in specific achievement situations: the Achievement Goal Involvement Questionnaire (AGIQ-6). A 40-item preliminary version was created from previous achievement goal questionnaires. Confirmatory Factorial Analyses (CFA) were then computed on the answers of 442 high school students having to learn a specific motor skill in a PE lesson. The CFA supported Elliot et al.’s (2011) sixfactor structure (Chi2/ddl = 2.45 ; CFI = .95 ; NFI = .92 ; RMSEA = .057) and led to the selection of 18 items (3 items per goal). The internal consistencies were acceptable for short scales (.66 ≤ Coeff. α ≤ .86). A follow-up study intended to test the congruent validity of the 18-item AGIQ-6 was conducted on 317 other high school students confronted with a similar PE task. Approach goals were found to be associated with an adaptive motivational pattern including perceived competence, incremental theory of competence, absorption in the task, and intrinsic motivation. Other-avoidance goals were associated with a maladaptive pattern as they were positively related to entity theory of competence and anxiety, and negatively related to entity theory of competence. These findings show that the AGIQ-6 is a valid questionnaire that opens new avenues of research regarding the dynamics of goal involvement.

Mots clés: achievement goals; motivational states; competence; valence

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]; Psychologie et comportements

H. Le Bars, A. Teboul, A. Pineau, C. Gernigon. Measuring states goal involvement in specific achievement situations: Development and validation of a 6-goal questionnaire. XIVth World Congress of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP), Jul 2017, Seville, Spain. ⟨hal-02926416⟩