Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article 2 (Dec., 2012) Nurcan KAHRAMAN and Semra SUNGUR-VURAL  An investigation on students’ personal achievement goals and perceived parents’ goal emphases in science Previous Contents Next

Method

Participants

Participants of the study were two hundred ninety five (144 girls and 151 boys), 7th grade elementary school students. They were from families with mostly 2 children. Although majority of students’ mothers were unemployed (82.5%), majority of students’ fathers were employed (83%). More than half of the students’ mothers (53.7%), graduated from primary education while majority of students’ fathers (74. 4%) graduated from high school and lowers. Nearly three quarters of students (73.7%) had reading materials less than 100 at their homes.

Instruments

The Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ)

The Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ), a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, was used to assess students’ achievement goals . The instrument was developed by Elliot and McGregor (2001) and adopted into Turkish by Senler and Sungur (2007) .The AGQ assesses students’ achievement goals according to the 2X2 framework of achievement goal theory. It assesses mastery approach goals with three items (e.g. “It is important for me to understand the content of this course as thoroughly as possible”), and performance approach goals with three (e.g. “It is important for me to do better than other students”). The coefficient alpha values were found to be .70 for the mastery approach goals, and .64 for the performance approach goals.
                 
Perceived Parent Goal Emphases Scale (PPGES)

Perceived Parent Goal Emphases Scale is a self-report instrument developed by Friedel, Cortina, Turner and Midgley (2007). It is a five point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The questionnaire was designed to assess students’ perceptions about their parents’ goal emphases. It consists of 11 items in two sub-scales: mastery approach goals with six items (e.g. “My parents want me to understand science concepts, not just do the work”), and performance approach goals with four items (.e.g.  “My parents would like me to show others that I am good at science”)

The scale was translated and adapted to Turkish by the authors of the current study. The translated instrument was examined by two instructors from science education department to confirm its content validity. Besides that, the grammar structure of the translation was examined by one expert from an academic writing center located in a large university. The instrument was pilot tested with 201 7th grade elementary students, (104 boys and 97 girls) and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to validate the factor structure for Turkish sample.  The coefficient alpha values were found to be .70 for the perceived parent mastery approach goals, and .64 for the perceived parent performance approach goals. The sub scales and their reliability coefficients for the current study were summarized in Table 1.