Date of Award

12-1-1980

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The area of achievement motivation research has been fought with theoretical and methodological controversy. The unitary construct of achievement motivation has been challenged by alternative models suggesting several dimensions of achievement orientation. Assessment methods have also been controversial with some researchers preferring objective measures while others prefer projective measures. A third problem in this research area involves the choice of appropriate behavioral or performance correlates of motivation in order to provide a measure of construct validity.

The purpose of the present study was to further explore one model of achievement orientation, the Veroff (1977) model which posits six distinct orientations toward achievement. They are Autonomy, Power, Social Approval, Competition, Task Mastery, and Effectance. The relationships between the projective measure of achievement orientation (Depner & Veroff 1979), an objective measure developed for this study corresponding to the projective measure, and subjects' self-reported orientation toward their future jobs was explored. It was hypothesized that Autonomy achievement is associated with the value of intrinsic job factors, Social Approval is associated with the value of work environment, and Power achievement is associated with the value of long term job rewards.

Results of canonical correlation analysis indicate that overall the projective measure of achievement orientation was not significantly related to the job reward values orientation measure. The predictions of specific relationships among the achievement and job reward orientations were not supported. However, the canonical correlation analysis did reveal a significant overall relationship between the objective measure of achievement orientation and job reward values orientation and two of the three predictions of specific relationships between the measures were supported by the data. Possible explanations of the failure of the results utilizing the projective measure to support the predictions are discussed and the implications of these results for future research are explored.

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