Perceived competence and autonomy as moderators of the effects of achievement goal orientations

The primary purpose of the study was to investigate whether two psychological characteristics, perceived competence and perceived autonomy, play roles as moderators in the relationship between achievement-goal orientations and a broad range of learning- and achievement-related variables. Compared to a mastery goal and a performance-avoidance goal, a performance-approach goal orientation has generated the most disagreement among researchers about its nature and effects. This study, therefore, examined perceived competence and perceived autonomy as moderators not only to understand better the effects of the performance-approach goal, but also to obtain evidence corroborating the positive relationship of a mastery goal and the negative relationship of a performance-avoidance goal with learning outcome measures. The participants in this study were 164 college students enrolled in a statistics course at a large university in the Southwest United States. The participants responded to measures of achievement goal orientations, perceived competence, perceived autonomy, adaptive learning strategy use, interest, and effort. Consistent with previous findings, the results from a series of analyses of variance in this study indicated that perceived competence and perceived autonomy play roles as moderators on the relationship of a mastery goal with certain outcome measures. Specifically, perceived competence increased the magnitude of the positive relationship between a mastery goal and adaptive learning strategy use, and perceived autonomy enhanced the magnitude of the positive relationship between a mastery goal and effort. However, no moderating effect was found for the relationship between either a performance-approach goal or a performance-avoidance goal and learningrelated outcomes. Consequently, the moderating role of perceived competence or perceived autonomy did not serve to clarify the relationship of performance goals with learning outcome measures. In addition, perceived competence played a significant role in determining the most beneficial type of multiple-goal pursuit in relation to increasing academic performance. For students who were high in perceived competence, the adoption of both a mastery goal and a performance-approach goal resulted in the highest level of achievement. On the other hand, for students low in perceived competence, the pursuit of a performance-approach goal alone led to the highest scores on achievement. Therefore, the effectiveness of the combination of a mastery goal and a performance-approach goal was evident only when the students who adopted the goals perceived themselves as competent. However, neither perceived competence nor perceived autonomy had critical roles in determining the optimal type of multiple-goal pursuit in relation to promoting other outcome measures (adaptive learning strategy use, interest, and effort).