The role of motivating tasks and personal goal orientations in students’ coping strategies in science

This study utilized a quantitative research methodology and it is nonexperimental. “Nonexperimental research describes phenomena and examine relationships between different phenomena without any direct manipulation of conditions that are experienced” (McMillian & Schumacher, 2010, p. 22). This study could be described as a correlational research since it looks for whether relationships exist between variables without any interference (Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyun, 2012). Additionally, it is cross-sectional since the data were collected at one time point.

Sample

The sample of the study consisted of 316 middle school students attending 4 public schools in one of the districts in Erzurum, a large city located in the eastern part of Turkey. These schools were easily accessible for the researchers and voluntary participation was considered. Data were collected in spring semester of 2015-2016 academic year. There were equal number of girls (n= 158, 50%) and boys (n= 158, 50%) in the sample. There were 107 (%33.9) sixth grade students, 107 (%33.9) seventh grade students, and 102 (%32.3) eighth grade students. The participants’ mean age was 13.18 (SD=1.00).

Instruments

Demographic Information Questionnaire was used to get information about participants’ background characteristics. It asks students’ gender, age, grade level, employment status and educational level of parents, and number of siblings.

Academic Coping Inventory was developed by Tero and Connell (1984) to investigate students’ coping strategies when they face with academic failure. It is responded on a five point Likert scale from (1) “do not believe at all” to (5) “completely true”. Inventory consists of 13 items and 4 subgroup: positive coping (3 items), projective coping (3 items), denial coping (3 items), and non-coping (4 items). The scale starts with a half sentence like “If something bad happened to me during science, such as doing poorly on a test or not being able to answer a question in class.” and wants students to complete this sentence with items given. Positive coping determines students’ adaptive strategies (example item: “I would try to figure out what I did wrong so it wouldn’t happen again”). Students blame others for their failure in projective coping (example items: “I would get angry at the teacher”). In denial coping, students do not emphasize this negative event or ignore failure (example item: “I would tell myself it didn’t matter”). If students blame themselves for this academic failure, this is non-coping (example item: I would feel really stupid.). The scale was translated and adopted to Turkish by Kahraman (2011) who validated the scale with middle school students. She conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to investigate factor structure for the Turkish version and fit indices obtained from CFA supported proposed factor structure (GFI = 1.00, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, S-RMR = .00). The coefficient alpha values of the subscales ranged from .73 to .84.

Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ) was developed by Elliot and Church (2001) to examine students’ adaption of goals. It is a five point likert scale ranging from choice of (1) “strongly disagree” to (5) “strongly agree”. Questionnaire consisted of 15 items and 4 sub-scale: mastery-approach goals (3 items), mastery-avoidance goals (3 items), performance-approach goals (3 items) and performance-avoidance goals (6 items). While mastery-approach goals deal with learning new things and developing skills (example item: I desire to completely master the material that presented in this class), mastery-avoidance goals refers to avoiding not learning and misunderstanding (example item: “I just want to avoid doing poorly in this class”). Performance-approach goals emphasize showing abilities and success to others (example item: It is important to me to do better than other students), performance-avoidance goals emphasize fear of failure among students (example item: “My goal for this class is to avoid performing poorly”). The questionnaire was adapted to Turkish by Senler and Sungur (2007). They investigated factor structure for the Turkish version and fit indices obtained from CFA supported proposed factor structure (GFI = .92, CFI = .90, RMSEA = .06, S-RMR = .07). Reliabilities of the subscales ranged from .64 to .81.

Survey of Classroom Goals Structures (Blackburn, 1998; Greene et al., 2004) was based on classroom structure proposed by Ames (1992) to support achievement goal. It is a four point Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagrees to (4) strongly disagree. The scale consists of 26 items and has 3 subscales: motivating tasks (10 items), autonomy support (5 items), and mastery evaluation (11 items). Motivating tasks subscale was used in this study. Motivating tasks refers to whether class activities and assignments are interesting for students (example item: “In this class activities and assignments are interesting”). The translation and adaptation of the scale into Turkish was made by Sungur and Gungoren (2009). They investigated factor structure for the Turkish version with middle school students and fit indices obtained from CFA supported proposed factor structure (GFI = .95, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .04, S-RMR = .03). The cronbach alpha reability of the motivating task subscale is .85.