Academic motivation-achievement cycle and the behavioural pathways: a short-timeframe experiment with manipulated perceived achievement

The present research investigates the relations between motivation and academic achievement in educational contexts. The first main question is whether motivation is reciprocally related to achievement and a cyclic loop of motivation and achievement is formed over time. The second objective is to study a possible behavioural mediating pathway between motivation and achievement by measuring objective effort spent on learning. Third, we examine the causality of these relations by investigating the dynamics between motivation and achievement (rather than the individual constructs) when perceived achievement is experimentally manipulated. The study is a short-timeframe experiment in which undergraduate Dutch students learn new English vocabulary and their motivation, effort, and achievement is measured at multiple time points within one hour. Roughly halfway in the experiment, participants receive rigged feedback that their achievement has dropped, which is expected to influence their subsequent motivation, effort, and actual achievement. To study these dynamics, we will model how one construct affects another construct over time under a random-intercept cross-lagged panel framework. Planned analyses, expected (narrative) results, and simulated data are provided.