Examining the stability of goal orientation

Two studies were conducted to examine whether students\u27 achievement goal orientations change as tasks change. These studies examined whether goal orientations are stable personality traits; Sixty-six undergraduate students at a large southwestern university enrolled in introductory educational psychology classes participated in these studies. Students self-reported goal orientations using the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scale (PALS; Midgley et al., 2000) were collected five times over the course of a semester: general context and before two assignments and two exams; A 3 (goal orientation subscale) x 4 (time) doubly multivariate repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted. Students\u27 performance scores were also submitted to a Rasch analysis using the program Quest (Adams & Khoo, 1994) to ensure equivalent difficulty levels across tasks. Classroom observations were conducted and teachers\u27 self-reported classroom goal structures were collected to ensure equivalent instructional techniques across studies; The findings supported the hypothesis that levels of goal orientations change at different tasks