A projective assessment of autonomous motivation in children:Correlational and experimental evidence

摘要

This article presents two studies aimed at val-idating a new TAT-like projective measure of autonomousmotivation in children. Study 1 assesses the validity of thenew measure by correlating it with self-report question-naires of autonomous motivation, positive and negativeaffect, task value and mastery goal orientation. Study 2 isan experiment in which autonomous motivation is manip-ulated and then assessed with the new projective measureand with a self-report scale. Results of both studies supportthe validity of the new projective measure. In study 2,regression analysis suggests that the new projective mea-sure is sensitive to aspects of experimentally inducedautonomous motivation that are not captured by a self-report measure.