ERIC Number: EJ1182256
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
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ISSN: EISSN-2196-0739
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Available Date: N/A
Who Likes to Learn New Things: Measuring Adult Motivation to Learn with PIAAC Data from 21 Countries
Gorges, Julia; Maehler, Débora B.; Koch, Tobias; Offerhaus, Judith
Large-scale Assessments in Education, v4 Article 9 2016
Background: Despite the importance of lifelong learning as a key to individual and societal prosperity, we know little about adult motivation to engage in learning across the lifespan. Building on educational psychological approaches, this article presents a measure of Motivation-to-Learn using four items from the background questionnaire of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Methods: We used multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses for ordered categorical data to investigate the scale's dimensionality and measurement invariance across countries. Regression analyses were used to investigate the scale's criterion validity. Results: Results show that the proposed four-item scale fits the data considerably better than the original six-item scale labeled Readiness-to-Learn. Further analyses support the scale's configural, metric (weak) and partial scalar (strong) measurement invariance across 21 countries. As expected, Motivation-to-Learn has significant relations to the working population's engagement in learning in terms of participation in non-formal education over the last 12 months. These relations remain relevant after taking literacy as an indicator of level of education into account. Conclusion: The Motivation-to-Learn scale presented here may be used to indicate adult motivation in cross-country comparisons. The potential of using the scale in future PIAAC analyses and research on adult learning is discussed. [This paper has been presented at the 8th Biennnal SELF Conference, August 20-24, 2015, in Kiel, Germany, and at the 1st International CIDER Conference, January 24-26, 2016, Berlin, Germany.]
Descriptors: Adult Learning, Learning Motivation, Factor Analysis, Questionnaires, Measurement, International Assessment, Regression (Statistics), Lifelong Learning, Educational Psychology, Error of Measurement, Cross Cultural Studies, Learning Readiness, Rating Scales, Validity, Informal Education, Futures (of Society)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Speeches/Meeting Papers; Reports - Research
Education Level: Adult Education
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Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
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