Development of Mathematics Motivation Scale: A Preliminary Exploratory Study With a Focus on Secondary School Students

The motivation for learning mathematics is an essential factor in predicting the performance of
secondary school students. Students who are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to learn
mathematics generally demonstrate higher performance than others who are not motivated. However,
a properly designed instrument for the measurement of this construct has been sparsely reported in the
literature. The present study is carried out to develop an instrument of high psychometric properties
for measuring the construct. The study involved 439 students randomly selected across secondary
schools using a survey research design. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to
determine the factor structure and distribution of items in each of the mathematics motivation
subscales. The factors are extracted using principal component analysis, and the extracted factors are
rotated using varimax. The analysis results in a final 24-item mathematics motivation scale, which
contained five subscales with around half of the total variance explained of 48.99% explained
variance. A high-reliability coefficient was found for the whole instrument with some empirical
evidence of construct validity. The concise instrument is recommended for assessing the motivation of
secondary school students, and further studies are recommended for its confirmation of factor
structures in independent samples.