Success and motivation among college students

The present research explores college students’ explanations of their success and failure in challenging activities and how it relates to students’ efficacy, value, and engagement. The results suggest most students hold one primary reason for success during the challenging activity, including grade/extrinsic, mastery/intrinsic, amotivation/working, social, and performance. These task reasons for success, if assumed to be goals, were more numerous than those suggested by goal theory. Task reason for success was important for engagement, intrinsic value, difficulty compared to others, and effort. As expected, engagement and intrinsic value were highest for those with mastery reasons but lowest for those in amotivation or those who succeeded because they made the grade. Unexpectedly, success was more important for motivation and experience of the activity. These results suggest that it is important to examine not only student goals, but also whether or not students reach their goals.