Creating Rich Portraits: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding Profiles of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations

• In Event: Considering the Whole Student: The Use of Person-Centered Approaches to Characterize and Study Motivation

Abstract

Doing schoolwork as a means to an end (extrinsic motivation) versus an end in itself (intrinsic motivation) is a distinction of consequence. Scholars have long used variable-centered methods to document the independent effects of each type of motivation and the oppositional relationship that can exist between them. More recently, however, scholars have begun to examine naturally occurring combinations of these constructs – i.e., motivational profiles (Ratelle et al., 2007; Vansteenkiste et al., 2009). This work has generally shown a profile with high intrinsic but low extrinsic motivation to be most adaptive, but it relies almost exclusively on a limited set of self-report measures that may fail to capture the complexities of students’ social-emotional functioning in school. Thus, the present study adopts a mixed-methods approach to more richly characterize and evaluate motivational profiles during the elementary and middle school years.

In the quantitative phase of the study, 243 third- through eighth-grade students completed self-report measures assessing intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as well as learning strategies, achievement goals, and well-being. Achievement indicators were collected from school records. Cluster analysis identified four profiles: high quantity (high intrinsic, high extrinsic), good quality (high intrinsic, low extrinsic), poor quality (low intrinsic, high extrinsic), and low quantity (low intrinsic, low extrinsic) motivation. As expected, the good quality profile showed the most adaptive pattern of responses. The high quantity profile appeared similarly adaptive on some dimensions but also reported more anxiety, ability-validation goals, and superficial learning strategies, and performed worse than the good quality profile. The poor quality and low quantity profiles fared equally poorly, although the low quantity group endorsed ability-validation goals to a lesser extent.

In the qualitative phase of the study, 54 students representing the four motivational profiles participated in semi-structured interviews to assess their perceptions of themselves and their school environment. Although there was substantial overlap in survey responses for the high quantity and good quality profiles, and for the poor quality and low quantity profiles, their interviews were quite distinct. Students with high quantity motivation demonstrated a preoccupation with self-presentation and other-approval. Those with good quality motivation, by contrast, approached school with passion and minimal anxiety. Students in the poor quality group focused on other-approval but also expressed a strong desire for more choice opportunities in the classroom. Those with low quantity motivation appeared disengaged yet did express enthusiasm for some areas of the curriculum, which could inform intervention efforts.

Overall, the interview phase served the goals of both methodological triangulation and complementarity (Greene et al., 1989). Interviews validated the clustering procedure in that extrinsic concerns were a dominant theme for the high quantity and poor quality profiles but not the good quality and low quantity profiles. Interviews also complemented the survey data by painting a far richer portrait of students in each of the four profiles. Taken together, these data suggest that it is particular combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations – rather than levels of each variable in isolation – that may best explain students’ academic and emotional functioning in school.

Authors

• Jennifer Henderlong Corpus, Reed College

• Kyla Haimovitz, Stanford University

• Stephanie V. Wormington, Duke University