A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF- BELIEFS AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION

The objectives of this study were to determine the relationship between self-beliefs and achievement motivation among engineering students. 305 boys and 254 girls from different engineering colleges of Punjab responded to all psychological measures used in the study. Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (Muris, 2001) and Perceived Competence Scale (Pintrich and DeGroot, 1990) were used to assess the self-beliefs of the students, whereas, Deo and Mohan's Achievement Scale (1985) was used to measure achievement motivation among the students. Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation were computed to find out which variables correlate significantly with achievement motivation among these students. The results revealed that in case of male engineering students, two dimensions of Self-efficacy i.e. Academic Self-Efficacy and Social Self- Efficacy were found to be positively correlated with their achievement motivation, whereas,in case of female engineering students,all three dimensions of Self-efficacy i.e. Social-Efficacy, Academic-Efficacy and Emotional-Efficacy were found to be positively related to their achievement motivation. The results also revealed that the perceived competence was a significant correlate of achievement motivation among both male and female engineering students. Overall, the results indicate that self-beliefs play a significant role in influencing the achievement motivation among engineering students.