Identifying Student Goal Orientations for the Improvement of Business Education: Results from Classical Test Theory and the Rasch Model

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-494-5_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

: goal orientation; mastery; mastery avoidance; performance; performance avoidance

Abstract

The research reported in this paper focuses on the goal orientations (GO) and, especially the measurement of such orientations, among university business students. Goal orientations are the tendencies or motivations to attain specific, desired results in settings, like universities, where achievement is to be pursued and where failure is to be avoided. Students’ goal orientations include Mastery, Master Avoidance, Performance, and Performance Avoidance. Mastery is about a desire to show command of certain subject matter; performance refers to demonstrating one is better than others at accomplishing certain tasks; and avoidance refers to evading the appearance of failure either in the command of materials or in achievements relative to those of others. These orientations are important, particularly to university educators charged with developing more effective instruction. Our objectives in this paper include improving the identification of students’ goal orientations and providing better tools, specifically measures and analytical methods, by which to understand such orientations. In the pursuit of these objectives, we re-use a student survey, one originally designed and analysed by means of Classical Test Theory, that was administered to business students at a public university in the United States. In our re-use we employ an alternative test theory, Rasch Analysis (or Modelling), a particular form of Item Response Theory, to provide further insights both into students’ orientations and the measures of them. The principal results of our research include finding that students’ goal orientations typically require more measurement items than were often previously employed; that Rasch Analysis or Modelling provides important ways of improving goal orientation measurement; and that Rasch Models led us to more effective ways of administering survey methods into business courses.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jeffrey Durand
AU  - Roger Durand
AU  - Phillip J. Decker
AU  - Jordan P. Mitchell
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/08/22
TI  - Identifying Student Goal Orientations for the Improvement of Business Education: Results from Classical Test Theory and the Rasch Model
BT  - Proceedings of the Pacific-Rim Objective Measurement Symposium (PROMS 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 326
EP  - 344
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-494-5_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-494-5_21
ID  - Durand2024
ER  -