Family-support goals drive engagement and achievement in a collectivist context: Integrating etic and emic approaches in goal research

Abstract

Much of the goal research in educational psychology has focused on top-down etic approaches with little emphasis on the use of bottom-up emic methods to uncover culturally-relevant phenomena. The aim of this study was to combine etic and emic approaches and to explore how goals derived from both approaches drive engagement and achievement. Study 1 was a qualitative study which aimed to examine the different types of goals that students spontaneously generated in school contexts. Wanting to help the family (which we labeled as family-support goal)was one of the most commonly-endorsed goals indicating its psychological salience for Filipino students. Study 2, a cross-sectional study, demonstrated that family-support goals were distinct from achievement goals. Study 3, a prospective longitudinal study, found that family-support goals positively predicted subsequent engagement and achievement. Study 4 replicated the results of Study 3 on a different sample of students after taking into account several relevant covariates (e.g., parental relatedness, relational self-construal, social desirability)thus ruling out the possibility of third variable confounds. Taken together, family-support goals were more salient predictors of optimal learning-related outcomes followed by mastery-approach goals. Results of the current study highlight the importance of taking culture into account in examining student motivation.