Research Library

The authors assessed the relationship between adolescents' achievement-related beliefs and their subjective valuing of achievement. Analyses suggest that achievement-related beliefs can be classified into 3 different task value factors (interest, perceived importance, and perceived utility), 1 expectancy / ability factor (comprising beliefs about one's competence, expectancies for success, and performance perceptions), and 2 task difficulty factors (perceptions of difficulty and perceptions of effort to do well). Task values and ability perception factors were positively related to each other and negatively correlated to adolescents' perceptions of task difficulty.