Motivational Systems Theory And The Academic Performance Of College Students

Abstract

This study explored the validity of the Motivational Systems Theory (MST) as a measure of performance of college students pursuing business degrees and the level of academic performance attained across gender and race lines.  This goal is achieved by investigating the relationships between motivational strategies, biological factors, responsive environment factors, skill/prior ability, and academic performance of these college students and the impact on the level of academic performance by the college students’ gender and race. The unit of analysis used in this study was 259 college students pursuing business degrees in an institution of higher learning in the south-eastern region of the United States. The instrument of choice was the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) which was used in prior studies to survey the relationship between motivation and learning strategies and performance of students in the disciplines of arts and sciences, philosophy, psychology and natural sciences.  The MSLQ will be used to obtain students responses to 50 questions pertaining to their college experience as relates to their motivation and application of learning strategies. The results indicated that the motivational systems theory is a valid predictor of performance. The female students’ levels of academic performance were higher than their male counterparts irrespective of race. The biological trait, test anxiety, impacted Caucasian females more than the other gender or race groups.  ANOVA confirmed that statistically significant relationships existed between academic performance and demographic variables gender and race. MANOVA confirmed that the differences in performance levels across gender and race lines were statistically significant.  The results strongly supported the premise that the levels of academic performance are impacted significantly across gender and race lines for college students pursuing degrees in accredited business programs.