Exploring achievement goals tendencies in students: the link between achievement goals and types of motivation

Aim. This research explored the link between motivation types and achievement goals. More specifically the research focuses on exploring goal endorsements among learners as well as their correlation with motivation.Methods. The sample of 600 participants was gathered among students enrolled in private (N= 156) institutions and public universities (N=444). The study was a quantitative one and utilized the Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ-R) as well as the Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation scales (Lepper, Corpus, &Iyengar, 2005).Results. The results stipulate that achievement goals are closely linked to situation factors such as university and department. Supporting the premise of fluidity of goal constructs. Ultimately, mastery approach, performance approach and performance avoidance goals did not discriminate between types of motivation, with three goals being positivelycorrelated to both types of motivation. Mastery avoidance goals were not correlated to any of the motivation types (intrinsic or extrinsic), but they showed a tendency to be negatively correlated to extrinsic motivation, a correlation that was not significant.Conclusion. Present research reveals that there are significant differences among participants in goal adoption according to year of study. Specifically, as expected first year students were significantly more mastery oriented than participants attending the second and third year of studies. Gender differences were also evident, with female students reporting higher levels of mastery orientation compared to male students. Finally, the inconclusive results regarding motivation types and achievement goals need future studies to reestablish the stipulated link

WORK AND HEALTH IN TRANSITION: TRENDS OF SUBJECTIFICATION IN APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY

"Reported is the synthesis of a series of seven studies on work and health, conducted collaboratively by researchers in applied psychology and occupational medicine. This qualitative meta-study develops a framework, in which reviewed studies are structured, aggregated, integrated, and interpreted in a theory-guided iterative process of themed analysis. Building on empirical results, the subsequent interpretive integration seeks to demonstrate, how overarching, pervasive, and in psychological research typically underemphasized tendencies of “subjectification” manifest in exemplary work contexts, research topics, and results. Subjectification of work is operationalized in dimensions of work intensification (performance focus), work internalization (goal adoption), and work individualization (job personalization). A meta-dimension is work insecurity (personal risk), cultivated in contemporary management ideologies of employee self-reliance. Following thematic description, content-analytical structuring criteria include: a) focus on work task (activity) versus working conditions (context); b) primary (close, direct, explicit) versus secondary (inferred, indirect, subtle) references to and/or indication for identified tendencies of subjectification; and c) theoretically assumed and empirically examined relationships with negative (psychopathological) and positive (psychosalutogenic) short, medium, and longer-term attitudinal and health-related work effects, as well as the personality-shaping impact of long-term occupational socialization. Psychological aspects of work tasks are core to 4 studies, 3 focus on working conditions and organizational practices. References to intensification were dominant in 4 studies, whereas 5 include internalization processes, and 3 predominantly focus on individualization of work. All studies share secondary or indirect references to other subjectifying tendencies. Examined work effects were aggregated into a matrix of short, medium and long-term positive and negative manifestations of health and wellbeing. Results suggest tensions and pressures arising from the motivational individualization of work tasks and conditions, resulting internalization of organizational interests and goals (e.g., performance, efficiency, costs), coupled with system-inherent tendencies of work intensification. These dysfunctional dynamics constitute risks factors for psychologically detrimental or harmful forms of self-management, self-control, and self-endangering work behavior, as manifestations of “internalized” incompatibilities between work and health in the neoliberal workplace, aggravated by existential threats associated with political-economic crisis. Outlined are implications of subjectification for a critical reevaluation and reorientation of basic theoretical assumptions of research and practice in applied psychology and occupational health."