The Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire: a study with Portuguese elementary school children

Abstract

Background: Several studies have focused on the assessment of students' motivation because this construct is very important to understand students' learning and how to enhance it. The Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A), based on the self-determination theory is a self-report instrument developed to access the reasons why students do their school work. However, there is no Portuguese version of this questionnaire for late elementary students. The primary goal of this research was to analyze the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of SRQ-A in the domain of Mathematics with elementary school children. Methods: Participants were 341 elementary school children ranging from 8 to 11 years old from the third and fourth grades. The Portuguese version of the SRQ-A included 24 items assessing four regulatory styles (external, introjected, identified, and intrinsic) in three behavioral categories (homework, classwork, and answering questions in mathematics lessons). To examine the psychometric properties of the instrument, we conducted an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), measured gender and grade invariance, and calculated internal consistency indexes and temporal stability. Results: ESEM analyses supported the original multidimensional structure of the measure with four regulatory styles using a reduced version of the instrument with 16 items. Correlations between the four regulatory styles revealed a simplex pattern consistent with the continuum of self-determination theory. Results showed adequate internal consistency for all regulatory styles (α ≥ .73; CR ≥ .76) and temporal stability (4-month test-retest ≥ .43). The questionnaire showed measurement and structural invariance across gender and grade. Finally, some gender differences were observed; on average, boys scored higher than girls in external regulation. No differences were observed between grades. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the Portuguese version of the SRQ-A has good psychometric properties providing adequate support for its use in educational research on motivational styles, including studies concerning gender and grade differences in self-regulation.

The Construct Validity of the Russian Version of the Modified Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A) among Elementary and Middle School Children

“…The SRQ-A has been widely used and applied across different cultures, including in North America (Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991); Germany (Kröner, Goussios, Schaitz, Streb, & Sosic-Vasic, 2017); Belgium (Vansteenkiste, Sierens, Soenens, Luyckx, & Lens, 2009); Italy (Alivernini, Lucidi, & Manganelli, 2011); Turkey (Bağçeci & Kanadli, 2014); Japan (Yamauchi & Tanaka, 1998); and China (Vansteenkiste, Zhou, Lens, & Soenens, 2005). It was also adapted into Spanish (Pichardo et al, 2018) and Portuguese (Gomes et al, 2019).…”

The Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences 2022 Official Conference Proceedings

“…Assessing student's motivation is an important concept in understanding and enhancing student's learning experience and academic self-regulation is strongly linked to the foundations of self-determination theory (Gomes et al, 2019). Self-determination theory stipulates that students need to have a sense of control and ownership over their learning experience and helping the students understand the purpose of their learning in order to succeed (Svinicki, 2010).…”

Validity and Reliability of the Portuguese Version of Mathematics Academic Motivation Scale (MATAMS) among Third Cycle of Basic School Students

“…Studies evaluating academic motivation for a specific area of knowledge are scarce. Table 1 presents the main studies on the application of AMS in elementary and secondary school by subject area: In Portugal, there have been some studies on the academic students' motivation [55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. In these studies different levels of education are examined.…”

“…Other authors analyze the psychometric properties of the AMS, which may be supported on the hypothesis of the Rating Scale Model (RSM) [59] or based on the Self-Determination Theory [57,58,61]. Additionally, Ferreira et al [55] developed a version of the instrument adapted from the "The Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) Scale" and Gomes et al [60] explored the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A) in the domain of mathematics with elementary school children.…”