The Mediating Role of Achievement Goals in the Relationship between Basic Psychological Needs and Students' Academic Involvement: A Research at Farhangian University

Active Academic Engagement Students' learning and academic achievement are important, and students with higher academic engagement have higher academic performance. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of achievement goals in the relationship between basic psychological needs and students' academic engagement using structural equation modeling. For this purpose, 382 undergraduate students of Farhangian University of Tehran (Shahid Mofteh Campus and Atrat Vavan Higher Education Center of Islamshahr) participated in the research. They replied to the Basic Psychological Needs Questionnaire (Ilardi et al. 1993), Achievement Goals Scale (Midgley et al. 2000) and Academic Engagement Scale (Assure, Kaplan & Roth, 2002). Structural equation modeling revealed that basic psychological needs exerted a direct, significant influence upon mastery and approach-performance goals, and an indirect one upon students’ academic engagement through the mediation of achievement goals. Additionally, mastery goals had a positive direct influence upon academic engagement, while the direct influence of performance-avoidance on academic engagement was negative. In general, findings of this study suggested psychological needs satisfaction led to choose mastery and approach-performance goals which could in turn influence their academic engagement.