| dc.description.abstract | One of the major concepts that is commonly used to explain human behaviour is motivation. In particular, achievement motivation studies have been conducted in an attempt to explain and interpret behaviour patterns of individuals who are motivated to achieve some degree of excellence.
The present study is aimed at establishing a relation-ship between achievement motivation and scholastic attainment. The study was conducted in two stages - a pilot stage followed by the main study or final phase.
The main purpose of the pilot study was three-
fold:
a) to refine the test instrument
b) to improve the test administration procedures
c) to improve the researcher's test - scoring ability.
During this stage a sample of 40 (forty) Form III boys from two Government secondary schools (20 from each school) were covered. A set of ten Thematic Apperception - type pictures were used as the test instrument and admini- stered under a neutral test situation. Subjects were
shown the pictures, one at a time for twenty seconds, and asked to write imaginative stories about them within four minutes using the following questions as a guide:
a) what might have happened before the scene in the picture?
b) what is happening now? what is being felt?
c) what is likely to happen next? what will be the outcome?
The stories were then scored for achievement motivation using an n-Ach scoring system developed by Smith and Feld (1957) based on earlier systems produced by McClelland et al in the early 1950s. The scoring system followed in the present study appears in Appendix
C. Subsequently five pictures were selected for use in the main study stage. The selection was based partly on the pictures' ability to evoke achievement imagery as well as on both their relative degree of ambiguity and the extent to which they were assumed to be familiar to the subjects. The five pictures so selected were administered of to a samplel\352 (three hundred and fifty two) from a total of eight government secondary schools, half of this number being boys'schools and the remaining half for girls. Further, two of the boys' schools and two of the girls' schools were relatively superior academically as compared with the remaining four schools as judged on the basis of the 1978 East African Certificate Examination results. The 'superior' schools were referred to as "good" schools while the relatively poor performing ones were termed "poor" schools. The subjects covered in the final survey were given the same treatment as their counterparts covered in the pilot study except that the former had five pictures (instead of ten) which were in form of booklets while those used in the pilot study were drawn on manila sheets.
However, the stories in the final survey were scored for n-Ach in the same way as for the pilot study. The n-Ach scores obtained were compared with the subjects' 1979 end- of-term average marks in Mathematics, Biology, Geography and English. The product-moment correlation coefficient method was used as a measure of relationship between achievement motivation and academic performance. The data obtained revealed low, negative and insignificant correlation between n-Ach and scholastic attainment. However, the n-Ach scores were very low ranging from 0-24%. Further, the results showed that girls had a significantly higher achievement motivation
level than boys and that there was no significant difference between the mean n-Ach score for girls from "poor" schools and that for girls from "good" schools. The findings also showed that pupils from "poor" schools as a whole were as achievement motivated as their counter- parts from "good" schools. Similar equality among these two categories of schools was observed with respect to academic performance Lethe 1979 end-of-term marks in Mathematics, Biology,Geography and English were not significantly different among the "poor" and the "good"
schools. The study recommends that more research could be done covering all the various types of secondary schools in Kenya in an effort to obtain a more comprehensive picture about the relationship between achievement motivation and performance in school subjects. In this connection it would be advisable to use a common academic test for the subjects as well as raise the achievement motivation of subjects to a level that can yield substantial basis for comparison. Further, one may wish to include other variables related to achievement motivation such
as self-concept and socio-economic background in an effort to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the relation¬ship between the need to achieve and performance in school subjects. | en |
