This article examines Maehr's Personal Investment Model of motivation, which has clear and significant implications for cross-cultural research in education. The design and validation of the Inventory of School Motivation (1SM) based on Personal Investment Theory is described. Evidence is presented for both the usefulness of the theoretical framework and the validity of the ISM in analyzing motivational variables for individuals from different cultural groups in educational settings. Multiple-regression analysis demonstrated the predictive power of the ISM, and discriminant analysis showed that variables from the scale were able to discriminate between students who returned to school for senior high school and those who did not.
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