Individual differences in the effects of academic motivation on higher education students’ intention to drop out

Abstract

The present study investigated individual differences in the effects of academic motivation based on self-determination theory (SDT), particularly intrinsic motivation, as well as identified, introjected, and external regulation on higher education students’ intention to drop out. Based on previous research, we challenged the assumption of a single global relationship between academic motivation and the intention to drop out and hypothesized there would be at least two groups or subpopulations, each of them with a unique group-specific academic motivation-intention to drop out relationship. A sample of 1002 first semester bachelor students from nine different German higher education institutions were analysed with the person-oriented approach of clusterwise linear regression analysis. Supporting our expectation, we identified three subpopulations of students. Results showed that intrinsic motivation was the strongest significant predictor in each of the three groups, whereas in none of the groups external regulation did significantly predict the intention to drop out. Moreover, our results revealed that the stronger the group-specific effect of intrinsic motivation, the higher the group-specific average intention to drop out. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications for higher education institutions.