Do Both Intrinsic and Identified Motivations Have Long-Term Effects?

Abstract

This research examined the possible long-term effects of autonomous motivation on educational outcomes in the large scale High School Longitudinal Study 2009 (HSLS:09) data. We used a three-wave cross-lagged model to examine the longitudinal effects of intrinsic and identified motivation on 18,132 students in the mathematics domain and 16,684 students in the science domain. The results showed that intrinsic motivation was a long-term and effective enhancement agent on the subsequent academic performance, self-efficacy, identity, and course effort. In contrast, identified motivation might be sensitive to the contexts and was thus vulnerable to change in the long-term effects. Though identified motivation has positive effects on some immediate educational outcomes and is often regarded as “helpful” motivation, its positive effect is probably short-lived and might not last long in real life educational settings.

Keywords:

• Intrinsic motivation
• identified motivation
• long-term effect
• cross-lag model

Notes

1 The ethnic group includes: American Indian/Alaska Native, non-Hispanic; Asian, non-Hispanic; Black/African-American, non-Hispanic; Hispanic, no race specified; Hispanic, race specified; More than one race, non-Hispanic; Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic; and White.

2 Effects of the controlling variables can be retrieved from the supplemental materials.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31800950).

Notes on contributors

Yuan Liu

Yuan Liu, PhD, is an associate professor of the Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University. His research interest includes applied statistics (longitudinal studies, structural equation modeling) and educational psychology (motivation, cultural difference). His publications appear in Journal of Classification, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, International Journal of Psychology, among others.

Kit-Tai Hau

Kit-Tai Hau, PhD, is a Choh-Ming Li Professor of Educational Psychology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is Fellow of the American Educational Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology. His research interest includes motivation and quantitative methods.

Xin Zheng

Xin Zheng, PhD, is an assistant professor at Faculty of Education, Southwest University. His research interests involve comparative education, teacher education and student learning. His publications appear in Teachers and Teaching, Teaching and Teacher Education.