Achievement and achievement motivation :|an explanatory model

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine parental factors related to achievement motivation and achievement of children in order to; 1) explain how parental factors act so that they influence academic achievement of children, 2) identify parental factors which are influential over achievement of children to provide guidelines for parent education programmes intending to increase academic achievement. A total of 1420 fifth grade students (498 during academic year 1988-89 and 922 during academic year 1989-90) attending to a private preparatory institute and their parents participated in the study. The sample was preferably chosen among samples attending a private preparatory institute due to the existence of a severe achievement situation facing these students. The measuring instruments used to assess parental variables were; 1) Home Educational Environment Questionnaire, 2) Parent Socialization Questionnaires, and 3) Parental Atti tudes Research Instrument. The measuring instruments used to assess achievement and achievement motivation of children were; 1) Achievement Motivation Scale, and 2) Achievement tests administered to the students as part of the private preparatory course. Home Educational Environment Questionnaire, Parent Socialization Questionnaires and Achievement Motivation Scale were developed and analyzed in terms of their validity and reliability by the researcher. The data was analyzed using; 1) Pearson Product Moment Correlations, 2) Analysis of Variance Technique, 3) Regression Analysis, and 4) Analysis by t-test. The results of the study indicate the existence of significant positive relationships between achievement motivation and overprotection and restrictions & punishments dimensions. On the other hand achievement was found to be negatively related to overprotection and strict discipline dimensions, and positively related to mother education, father education, democracy, demands & age, and home educational environment where home educational environment, mother education, and strict discipline were observed to be the three parental variables explaining the greater percent of variance in achievement of children. No significant relationship was observed between achievement motivation and achievement. The nonexistence of a relationship between achievement motivation and achievement as well as the low number of contradictory correlations between achievement motivation and other parental process variables are discussed in terms of 1) the homogeneity of the sample population, 2) the dominant effect of ability over achievement motivation, 3) problems concerning the content-validity of Achievement Motivation Scale, and 4) the relative position of achievement motivation within the sample population. Although the results indicate the existence of global and specific parental behaviors/attitudes related to different achievement levels, they lack the explanation concerning the function of achievement motivation in causing differences in the achievement level. Therefore implications of the results were mainly directed towards parental factors related to higher academic achievement. Characteristics of parents whose children achieve higher compared to other children were outlined resulting in a list of "favorable" parental attitudes and behaviors related to high academic achievement. These "favorable" parental characteristics were differentiated in terms of their instructability level and parent education programmes which could provide a change from "unfavorable" to "favorable" parental characteristics were discussed.