Online measurement of appraisals of students faced with curricular tasks

Abstract

The On-Line Motivation Questionnaire assesses students’ judgments of a learning situation in real classroom situations. The present study focuses on the part of this instrument related to student appraisals at the onset of a task. A sample of 780 Dutch 7th-grade students completed the questionnaire for eight tasks (Dutch, French, history, mathematics) on two occasions. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that seven of the eight presupposed factors could be distinguished empirically. This internal structure appeared invariant over the academic tasks included in the study and seemed also stable over a half-year period. Internal consistencies of scores on the seven subscales appeared satisfactory for research purposes.