Studying the Motivational Beliefs as Predictor Variables in Math Academic Performance

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the Motivational Beliefs as Predictor Variables in Math Academic Performance. The statistical population of the study consisted of all junior high school students in Bandar Abbas in the first educational district in the academic years 2015-16. The sample consisted of 418 students, including 191 girls and 227 boys who were selected using multistage cluster sampling method. The required information to explain the three components of motivational beliefs, such as self-efficacy, intrinsic valuing and test anxiety were collected through a series of 25 questions of the Motivational Strategies for Learning questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich and DeGroot, 1990). Results show that the average of continuous score for female students in math is 15.37 and for male students is 13.14. Standard deviation for continuous grades among girls is 3.5 and for boys is 4.19. Since the obtained p-value for all the research variables is a number greater than 0.05, there is no reason to reject the null hypothesis (H0) and the assumption of normality is confirmed for all variables. Also, results show that there is no difference between the aggression reduction pre-test in the test and control groups. But there is a significant difference in the aggression reduction post-test in the test and control groups with the control of aggression reduction pre-test with F value of 2426.21 at p <0.001. Also, the effect size difference between the two groups is 0.97 and that the amount of the difference is extremely high and demonstrates the effectiveness of the experiment