The Reliability and Validity of two Objective Measures of Achievement Motivation for Adolescent Females

Abstract

Two measures of motive to succeed were revised for administration to female ninth grade students (N = 71). Scores on Hermans' (1970) Prestatie Motivatie Test (PMT) yielded a high degree of internal consistency, comparable to that obtained with males, which was greater than that found for scores on the present version of Mehrabian's (1969) Resultant Achievement Motivation (RAM) Test. In separate validation analyses, scores on the PMT were observed to correlate positively and substantially with each of two measures of school achievement and with questionnaire data on school-related attitudes and behavior. Although the correlations of the RAM scores with achievement measures were in the same direction, they were weaker than those for the PMT scores. The relationships between the two measures of motive to succeed and various internal causal ascriptions were different and low for the two instruments.

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