Nature, predictor, and outcomes of motivation trajectories during a professional training program

ABSTRACT

The present study examines the shape, determinants, and outcomes of autonomous and controlled motivation trajectories over the course of aprofessional training program. Asample of 43 employees completed the measures on four occasions over the course of a14-week professional training program. This study also relies on aburst design, whereby employees completed each measure twice (with ahalf-day interval) at each measurement occasion to achieve amore accurate representation of occasion-specific ratings. Results from three-level growth analyses (with the two bursts at Level 1, four occasions at Level 2, and participants at Level3) showed that autonomous motivation, negative affect, learning, and satisfaction appeared to follow curvilinear trajectories, whereas autonomy support and positive affect followed linear trajectories. In contrast, controlled motivation, fatigue, and engagement levels remained stable over time, consistent with an intercept-only model. Furthermore, higher levels of autonomy support were associated with higher levels of autonomous motivation, and lower levels of controlled motivation over time. Finally, higher initial levels of autonomous motivation predicted higher levels of positive affect, learning, satisfaction, and engagement, and lower levels of fatigue over time, whereas higher initial levels of controlled motivation predicted higher levels of fatigue over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Motivation trajectories
• self-determination theory
• professional training
• autonomy-supportive behaviours
• affect
• engagement
• satisfaction
• fatigue
• learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Although the estimates of scale sore reliability (α) obtained for these two subscales are located at the lower bound of acceptability, it is important to keep in mind that α coefficients are drastically impacted by the number of items included in a subscale (Streiner, 2003). Indeed, in the present study, the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994) indicates that these α would be of .853 (autonomous motivation) and .859 (controlled motivation) if they were based on six items equivalent to the two items included in this study. However, this lower level of reliability also highlights the importance of adopting an approach providing some additional control for unreliability, such as the latent aggregation approach discussed in the analysis section.