Motivational determinants of goal commitment

We examined motivational determinants of goal-commitment, namely the final examination of university students (n = 156) from different faculties. We considered judgements of probability of success, of goal-importance, of aspirations concerning one's own achievement as well as instrumentalities and valences of outcomes and finally respondent and operant measures of need for achievement. We expected goal-commitment directly to be determined by success-probability and goal-importance. These two should be predicted by achievement-aspirations and by instrumentalities and valences of the outcome, which finally should be influenced by the degree of need for achievement. In general the hypothesis of a multilevel model is supported by statistical analysis, namely by fitting a linear structural equation model. In contrast to our expectations the motive-measures do not show a significant relationship with expected consequences of the outcome. However, this relationship - at least concerning the hope-for-success-component - is mediated by aspiration. The aspiration-variable is of unexpected importance in the model by directly determining outcome-consequences as well as goal-importance, -probability and finally goal-commitment. Furthermore there is a significant path connecting consequences of outcome with commitment. 47% of the variance of the goal-commitment-variable is explained by the model which in total reaches a very good fit.