Academic Locus of Control as a Predictor of Academic Motivation among Undergraduate Students in Pakistan

Abstract

Academic motivation has been widely recognized as a vital psychological factor that influences students' educational participation, persistence and achievement in university. Academic locus of control students' beliefs regarding personal versus external control over educational outcomes has been theoretically proposed as an important predictor of motivational functioning. Few studies have systematically investigated the prediction of specific motivational profiles, such as amotivation, by internal and external components of the academic locus of control in non-Western settings, particularly for university students in the undergraduate level. The purpose of the present study was to test academic locus of control as predictor of academic motivation of under graduate university students in Pakistan context. The research was conducted using a cross-sectional research design. The total number of participants were 400 undergraduate students (Male = 181, Female = 219) aged between 18-26 years from public, private and semi-government universities, who were selected by snowball sampling. The Academic Motivation Scale College Version (AMS-C 28; Vallerand et al., 1992) with an α = .870 and the Academic Locus of Control-Revised Scale (ALOC-R; Curtis & Trice, 2013; α = .607) were administered. The negative correlations between the internal and external Locus of Control and the intrinsic/extrinsic motivation were significant, while the positive correlations with amotivation were also significant in both cases for both the internal and external Locus of Control. The regression analysis also revealed a significant prediction of intrinsic motivation and amotivation by the internal locus of control and prediction of intrinsic motivation by external locus of control. The present results indicate that the nature of the relationship between academic locus of control and motivational functioning is not straightforward and simple among the Pakistani undergraduate students and have important implications in terms of educational interventions that strengthen the motivational functioning of students in their academic engagement.