Development and validation of an academic goal-setting questionnaire for middle school students

Goal-setting is a process to set desired future end-states that the person wants to attain. In this study, we developed and validated a student goal-setting questionnaire. Given the goal-setting theory and goal imagery, 29 items within 5 factors were designed for the assessment of educational goal-setting. 10 experts in psychology and 1332 (middle school) students participated in a cross-sectional design. All of the items were approved by the impact score of face validity, but content validity verified only 22 items. Confirmatory factor analysis verified the five-factor model of the questionnaire and explanatory factor analysis extracted the five factors from the 22 items. As for criterion validity, the questionnaire could predict 20% and 28% of the variance of grade goal and average final grade, respectively. Concerning the concurrent validity of the questionnaire, achievement goals could predict 21% of the variance of the goal-setting questionnaire. Moreover, Cronbach’s α showed that the questionnaire has acceptable internal consistency (over .70). The Academic Goal-Setting Questionnaire which was designed in this study for middle-school students had acceptable validity and reliability and could predict academic performance more than the other well-known questionnaires such as the Achievement Goals Questionnaire.