Expectancy Value Interactions and Academic Achievement: Differential Relationships with Achievement Measures

Publication date: Available online 7 January 2019Source: Contemporary Educational PsychologyAuthor(s): Jennifer Meyer, Johanna Fleckenstein, Olaf KöllerAbstractMotivation predicts academic achievement beyond cognitive ability. Expectancy value theory (Eccles et al., 1983) is a widely accepted and powerful approach explaining academic achievement as well as educational choices and attainment. Recently, attention to the multiplicative term of expectancy and value beliefs has increased. Trautwein et al. (2012) reported a detrimental effect of high task value when expectancy beliefs were low. We aimed to replicate and extend their study by using a large, representative sample of students attending upper secondary school in the German federal state Schleswig-Holstein (N = 3,367). Following Trautwein et al. (2012), we applied latent interaction modelling to test whether the predictive value of expectancy value interactions differs for grades, final examinations, and standardized test scores as measures of achievement in two domains. We took the multi-dimensional structure of task value into consideration, analyzing the four components (attainment, intrinsic value, utility and cost) separately. Both a verbal and a non-verbal domain (English as a foreign language and mathematics) were investigated. Overall, the results supported those of Trautwein et al. (2012). However, our findings suggest measure- and domain-specific differences when using expectancy value beliefs and their inter...
Source: Contemporary Educational Psychology - Category: Child Development Source Type: research