Analyzing Motivation

When analyzing your motivation, you need to look at a number of factors, including:

• Your goals — your personal goals, your academic goals, your social goals, and your occupational/professional goals.

• Your beliefs about your chances of succeeding — we call these self-efficacy beliefs.

• What you think causes success or failure in college — we call these attribution beliefs.

• The degree to which you want rewards from others, such as praise or gifts, versus the degree to which you do things to please yourself — we call these external and internal motivations.