Brief ReportMotivation and engagement in diverse performance settings: Testing their generality across school, university/college, work, sport, music, and daily life☆
Section snippets
The Importance of integrative approaches to motivation and engagement
Motivation and engagement can be respectively conceptualized as individuals’ energy and drive to achieve to their potential and the behaviors that follow from this energy and drive (Martin, 2007a). Critical reviews of motivation and engagement research point to the fact that such research is fragmented. As a result, there have been calls for more integrative approaches to its research and theorizing (Murphy and Alexander, 2000, Pintrich, 2003). There are various means by which integrative
The Motivation and Engagement Wheel
There are significant commonalities across theories and models of human behavior, affect, and cognition and which provide direction as to fundamental dimensions of motivation and engagement. It is in this context that the Motivation and Engagement Wheel (Fig. 1; Martin, 2002, Martin, 2003, Martin, 2007a) was developed drawing on seminal motivation theorizing (e.g., goal theory, self-worth motivation theory, expectancy-value theory—see Martin, 2007a, Martin, in press, for full discussion of the
Multi-group CFA and tests of invariance
Although most research assesses mean-level differences, relatively less attention is given to sample differences in the factor structure of motivation and engagement and the question, for example, of whether a given instrument measures the same components of motivation and engagement with equal validity for one sample more or less than another. Also as discussed at the outset, invariance holds pragmatic, statistical, substantive, and intervention implications. Such concerns about factor
Samples
The high school sample is drawn from a series of studies that pioneered the early work on the Motivation and Engagement Wheel (e.g., Martin, 2003, Martin, 2007a, Martin, 2007b). The elementary school and university/college samples were the focus of prior work into developmental perspectives on motivation and engagement (Martin, submitted for publication). The workplace sample is drawn from prior work into engagement in the workplace (Martin, 2006). The music and sport samples are drawn from
Confirmatory factor analysis
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using LISREL 8.80 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2006). Maximum Likelihood Estimation was used to estimate the model. Fit indices were the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI), and non-normed fit index (NNFI). For RMSEA, values at or less than .08 are taken to reflect a close and reasonable fit while values under .05 are considered to be an excellent fit (see McDonald & Marsh, 1990). The NNFI and CFI varied along a
Results
Findings for respective invariance tests based on z-scored items and original metric items are presented in Table 1. Findings indicate that when successive elements of the factor structure are held invariant across groups, the fit indices are predominantly comparable from: (a) the first order model with all parameters free to vary, (standardized items/unstandardized items) CFI = .98/.98 (NNFI = .98/.98, RMSEA = .04/.04) to the most restrictive first order model, CFI = .98/.97 (NNFI = .98/.97, RMSEA =
Discussion and conclusion
The present study has extended previous research by demonstrating broad generality of motivation and engagement constructs across school, university/college, work, music, and sport. The present study is also unique in that it introduces motivation and engagement in daily life and demonstrates its psychometric strength. As Martin (in press) has argued, there are many conceptual congruencies in motivation and engagement theory across diverse performance domains. He has proposed that constructs
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This article was in part prepared while the author was Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.