The Role of College Students’ College-attendance Value and Achievement Goals in Desired Learning Outcomes

The purpose of this study is twofold, testing how hierarchical motivation modeling explains college students’ academic performances over subsequent semesters; extending the motivation modeling on the university graduate attributes of another sample at a certain time point, by the regular, contextualized institutional-research (IR) practices. The hierarchical motivation modeling denotes that college-attendance values explain achievement goals, eliminating the effect of prior academic performance (i.e., the covariate). Participants were two cohorts of college sophomores with a 1-year gap in Taiwan who voluntarily responded to regular university-wide surveys. The path analysis results of Study 1 (N = 652, 39% female, 61% male) confirmed that the modeling explains the subsequent academic performance, and study hours. Those of Study 2 (N = 681, 43% female, 57% male) further confirmed that achievement goals mediate the values and the attributes. These IR findings indicate directions for college education innovation in boosting the motivated trajectory and the desired learning outcomes worldwide.