The Structural Relationship and Latent Means Analysis of Gender among Academic Self-Efficacy, Interest, External Motivation and Science Achievement for High School Students

This study was carried out to investigate the difference of gender of academic self-efficacy, external motivation, interest and science achievement for high school students of Korea and to verify the structural relationship among these variables using PISA 2006 data. The major findings of this study are as follows. According to Multi-group analysis, Latent means analysis (LMA), where boys were used as the reference group, girls showed lower latent mean values on the academic self-efficacy, extrinsic motivation and interest. Academic self-efficacy was found to have a greater effect on achievement compared to external motivation and interest. According to structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, academic self-efficacy and extrinsic motivation affected interest. Academic selfefficacy, external motivation, and interest affected science achievement. Lastly, interest mediated academic selfefficacy and external motivation on science achievement.