The objective measurement of motivation structure in children

Abstract

PROBLEMThe application of a number of objective tests to determine motivation components is opening a new dimension in the study of attitudes. Cattell and Baggaley(60 ') studying the attitudes of Air Force men isolated five replicable and psychologically meaningful factors. Three were descriptiveIy identified with psychoanalytic functions ascribed to the id, ego and super ego, and the other two factors were descriptively related to the physiological involvement in an attitude and the repressed conflicts which an attitude summons forth. A previous study by RadclifTe (8) with a limited number of variables yielded results which largely confirmed the presence of these same motivation components in the measurement of children's attitudes. That study, like Tapp's('O) utilized group devices and therefore failed to isolate a delta factor.The purpose of this study was to replicate the three previous studies mentioned and to add instruments to measure the physiological components. It assumed the additional function of testing new devices utilizing psychodynamic principles which might clarify the manifest nature of the motivation factors thus far only descriptively identified. METHODSubject. The subjects for this study, as for the pilot study, were grade school children of both sexes from the public schools of Decatur, Illinois. The racial constituency was largely white, but included a few Negroes of insufficient number to warrant statistical recognition. Attitudes. To conform to the general pattern of the pilot studies@' l o ) this study was also primarily directed toward the measurement of attitudes toward movies and religion. Attitudes from eight other sentiment areas were included to be used as an "attitude pool". These other areas were: sports and fitness, comics, patriotipm, science, domestic tasks, out-of-doors, mechanical activities and pets. The religious attitude to be measured was "I want to go to church to gain help from my faith". The attitude toward movies was "I want to go to the movies". Test Devices. The test devices were carefully selected to fill several needs distinctive to this study. The criteria utilized in this choice were: historical effectiveness as markers of motivation components, adaptability physically and psychologically to a young population, and ability to discriminate between two or more conflicting hypotheses for the identifying of the same motivation components. Marker variables were chosen largely from the Catt,ell and Baggaley(60 ') studies. Statistical Analysis. The scoring of the test devices was largely ipsative, thus measuring not differences between individuals but differences between any individual's attitudes. These test scores for religion and for movies were intercorrelated into two separate matrices, each of which was then factored. Preliminary studies suggested that the extraction of fifteen factors should be adequate to include the significant interrelationships.The centroid factor structure was then subjected to standard oblimax rotation process as programmed on the Illiac...

Theory of situational, instrument, second order, and refraction factors in personality structure research.

“…Recently, in a study of the Music Preference Test of Personality (Cattell & Anderson, 1953) by Mayeske (1961) an instrument factor appeared even separating all items resting on one form of musical recording from those based on another technique. Instrument factors have become better understood in the last couple of years through extensive studies of their appearance in objective motivation structure analyses (Cattell, Radcliffe, & Sweney, 1960;R. B. Cattell & J. Horn, unpublished).…”

Relations Between Conscious And Unconscious Manifestations Of Motivation In Children

“…An important part of the program of work begun by Cattell (1950) has been precisely directed at the specification of operational meaning for the terms "conscious" and "unconscious" in the realm of motivation. Studies by Cattell and Baggaley (1956), and by Cattell, Radcliffe and Sweney (1962) have brought this program of work closer to its goal by the discovery of two major second-order factors that may be found in motivation measurement devices (regardless of content) : a factor of Integrated Motivation, loading such devices as amount of information, degree of censorship, and success of volitionally directed attention ; and a factor of Unintegrated Motivation, loading such devices as choice of fantasy topic, selective memory, projection, and simple preference.…”

Dynamic factors in twelve year old children as revealed in measures of integrated motivation

“…Test Battery. The test battery consisted of three distinctly different group test devices each chosen to represent one of the three replicable integrated motivation components found by the 1958 children's study (12). A test was then developed utilizing these devices to measure the sixty chosen attitudes.…”