Construction and Initial Validation of the Chinese Reading Motivation Questionnaire

Abstract

This paper describes the development and initial validation of a Chinese reading motivation questionnaire (CRMQ) which was designed to assess Chinese students' reading motivation in Hong Kong. The development of the CRMQ consisted of two steps. In the first study, groups of items were constructed based on achievement motivation theories and existing instruments. The initial version of the CRMQ was administered to a small group of Grade 7 students in Hong Kong and exploratory factor analysis, item‐total correlation, and reliability analyses were carried out to assess its psychometric quality. The CRMQ was then revised and administered to a larger sample of Grade 7 students in the second study. Findings of confirmatory factor analysis provided further validation for the proposed factor structure of the revised questionnaire. In addition, findings indicated that students' reading motivation was positively related to their strategy use, reading comprehension, and academic achievement. The findings of this study could enrich our understanding of Chinese reading motivation among Hong Kong students. Implications of these findings for implementing effective reading instruction in Chinese language teaching are also discussed.

Notes

Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Social Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Email: [email protected]

Since 2001, all Primary 6 students in Hong Kong have been grouped by the Secondary School Places Allocation system into three different bands. In general, Band 1 is the top band constituting the best 33.3% of students while Band 3 is the bottom band constituting the worst 33.3% of students.