Social achievement goals and students' socio-economic status: Cross-cultural validation and gender invariance

Mustafa Bahar
International Burch University, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Hasan Uğur
Academic Window LLC, New Hampshire, USA
Mustafa Asil
University of Otago, New Zealand

Social motivations of young adolescents are strongly influenced by differing levels of social achievement goals, which in turn are affected by a number of factors. Specifying these factors, especially those effective on achievement, can help improve conditions for learning. A thorough approach would include a generalisable pattern of behaviour to offer global explanations in and out of classroom interactions. This study aimed at assessing the factorial validity and measurement invariance of Social Achievement Goals Scale (SAG) and its perception by students from low and high socio-economic status in an urban setting with a sample of 1643 middle school students. Confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance analyses across gender were performed and mean differences between low and moderate high socio-economic status were sought. Proposed factorial structure of the SAG measure was confirmed and measurement invariance results indicated that SAG was measuring the same construct in the same way for female and male students. Male students were found to have slightly stronger social development, social demonstration-approach, and social demonstration-avoid goals than their female counterparts. Moderate-high socio-economic status students had significantly higher social achievement goals than low socio-economic status students.
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Authors: Dr Mustafa Bahar is assistant professor of educational sciences in the Faculty of Education and Humanities at International Burch University, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. His works and research focus on educational assessment, effective schooling and academic achievement of adolescents. Email: dr.measurement@gmail.com Web: https://people.ibu.edu.ba/burch-university-people/mbahar.html Dr Hasan Uğur worked as an assistant professor at a psychological counselling and guidance department for six years. Currently, Dr Uğur is the president of a company which he founded, Academic Window LLC, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, focusing on effective preventive school counselling. Email: hasan.ugur@academicwindow.com Web: https://www.academicwindow.com Dr Mustafa Asil is a research fellow in the Educational Assessment Research Unit, College of Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. His research interests focus on comparability of large scale assessments across languages and cultures, measurement equivalence and structural equation modelling. Email: mustafa.asil@otago.ac.nz Web: http://www.otago.ac.nz/education/staff/otago082930.html Please cite as: Bahar, M., Uğur, H. & Asil, M. (2018). Social achievement goals and students' socio-economic status: Cross-cultural validation and gender invariance. Issues in Educational Research, 28(3), 511-529. http://www.iier.org.au/iier28/bahar.pdf