Paper Summary

Development of an Implicit Association Test Type (IAT-T) Measure of the 2 x 2 Achievement Goal Model

Sat, April 14, 12:25 to 1:55pm, Vancouver Convention Centre, Floor: First Level, East Ballroom B

Abstract

Researchers typically assess achievement goals with self-report measures. Here we present the development of a novel alternative using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a reaction time based computerised sorting task. We adapted standard scoring algorithms to obtain four IAT – Type (IAT-T) goal scores. Ninety-nine undergraduate students participated in this study. The IAT-T demonstrated good internal consistency (goal alphas ≈ .85). We found moderate to large negative correlations between IAT-T goals sharing a dimension and no relationship between goals not sharing one. This pattern differs from that of self-reported goals, yet both are theoretically plausible. As with similar implicit measures, the IAT-T did not correlate with self-report outcomes, though its predictive utility for behavioural and performance outcomes remains to be investigated.

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