“I Chose Math Because…”: Cognitive interviews of a motivation measure

• Published in: Contemporary educational psychology Vol. 66; p. 101992
• Main Authors: Rutherford, Teomara, Liu, Allison S., Wagemaker, Marina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.07.2021
• Subjects: Academic motivation; Cognitive validity; Measurement; Measurement; Cognitive validity; Academic motivation
• ISSN: 0361-476X; 1090-2384
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2021.101992

•Novel measure of expectancies, values and academic emotions had high cognitive validity.•Some children struggled with question content, others with question form.•Cognitive validity increased with age.•Some children confounded expectancies and values in describing answers. The ability to accurately measure academic motivation is important to its value as a predictive variable for learning, achievement, and other outcomes. Although measures of motivation are frequently subject to quantitative validation (e.g., Appleton, Ntoumanis, Quested, Viladrich, & Duda, 2016; Gagné et al., 2015; Pekrun, Goetz, Frenzel, Barchfeld, & Perry, 2011), the establishment of cognitive validity is more rare. By conducting cognitive interviews with a sample of elementary-aged children, we explored the cognitive validity of a novel motivation (expectancy–value and academic emotions) survey embedded in an educational technology. Children were largely able to accurately interpret questions, elaborate on their reasoning for answers, and choose answers congruent with those reasons. Challenges to cognitive validity fell under varied and underdeveloped interpretations of expectancy–value concepts; misunderstandings related to available response choices; and discrepancies between younger and older children’s abilities to judge their perceived competencies and values. Insights from these interviews can be applied to interpretation of the immediate survey, but also to design and interpretation of motivation surveys beyond the current measure.