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Research on achievement goals has highlighted four goals orienting students' activities in academic tasks : performance-approach (proving one's own abilities), performance-avoidance (avoiding showing incompetence), mastery-approach (trying to understand and master the task), and mastery- avoidance (avoiding misunderstanding and not mastering the task). These four goals have different effects, especially on studys strategies, and on intrinsic motivation.
The first part of the article presents the research field of achievement goals. The second part presents a study validating in French Elliot and McGregor's (2001) achievement goal questionnaire comprising the above four dimensions. The translated scale was completed by 164 second-year psychology students. Factor analyses revealed a four-dimensional structure. Moreover, Cronbach's alphas showed that all sub-scales have good reliability. Finally, regression analyses provided evidence of the good external validity of the scale. Indeed, as expected, the performance-approach goal tended to predict positively surface studying. The performance-avoidance goal predicted negatively deep studying and positively surface studying and disorganization. The mastery-approach goal was a good predictor of deep studying and intrinsic motivation. Finally, the mastery-avoidance goal predicted positively disorganization and negatively intrinsic motivation. In sum, all the results obtained with the English version of the scale are reproduced herewith its French version.
