examining the relations among early adolescent students’ goals and friends’ orientation toward...

CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 22, 165–191 (1997)ARTICLE NO. EP970930

Examining the Relations among Early Adolescent Students’Goals and Friends’ Orientation toward Effort and

Achievement in School

Timothy C. Urdan

Emory University

Research examining students’ achievement goals has often excluded social constructs.A large body of research exists demonstrating the importance of relationships withpeers during early adolescence. In this study the relations among eighth grade students’(N Å 260) achievement goals and the orientation of students’ friends toward academiceffort and achievement were examined. Regression analysis revealed that associatingwith positively oriented friends was the strongest predictor of task goals, whereasassociating with negatively oriented friends was strongly related to pursuing extrinsicand effort avoidance goals. Relative ability goals were related to the positive orientationof friends scale for boys but not for girls. Significant interactions between positivefriend orientation and achievement level on relative ability goals were also found.Discriminant analysis demonstrated that the goal orientations students hold discrimi-nates between their tendencies to associate with negatively and positively orientedfriends. Implications for research are discussed. q 1997 Academic Press

Adolescence is a dynamic period of development. It is during this stageof life that many students experience a decline in academic achievement andmotivation (Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Wheelock & Dorman, 1988). Duringthis time students are also particularly concerned with their peer relationships(Berndt, 1979; Berndt & Keefe, 1992; Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986). Al-though it is possible that these two phenomena occur independently of eachother, it is likely that concerns about peers are related to concerns aboutacademic achievement. Despite this probability, there is little research examin-ing the relation between academic achievement motivation and social con-structs, such as students’ perceptions of their relationships with peers (Juvo-

This research was supported by a Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship award from theHorace H. Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan and by the Office of Educa-tional Research and Improvement, Department of Education through the National Center forSchool Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Grant R117C80003). Theauthor expresses appreciation to Dr. Carol Midgley, Dr. Martin Maehr, Dr. Frank Pajares, Dr.Lynley Hicks, the members of the Middle and Elementary School Coalitions, the teachers andstudents at the participating middle schools, and the anonymous reviewers of this article for theirhelpful comments.

Address reprint requests to Timothy C. Urdan at his current address: Department of Psychology,Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 05053.

165

0361-476X/97 $25.00Copyright q 1997 by Academic PressAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP

166 TIMOTHY C. URDAN

nen & Weiner, 1993). Similarly, much of the research examining adolescentstudents’ social concerns has not been grounded in any particular theory ofmotivation. The purpose of this study is to merge these two related strandsof research and examine the relationship between students’ academic achieve-ment goals and their perceptions of their friends’ academic attitudes andbehaviors.

DEFINING GOALS AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

In motivation research goals have been conceptualized in a wide varietyof ways. For example, goals have often been defined in terms of performanceobjectives, or what the student is trying to accomplish (e.g., Bandura, 1986;Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981). Another way to define goals is interms of the perceived purposes of achievement, or why the student is tryingto achieve academically (Ames, 1984, 1992; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Maehr,1984; Nicholls, 1984, 1989). Dweck has argued that the latter goals are‘‘more superordinate classes of goals that are behind the particular outcomesindividuals strive for’’ (Dweck, 1992, p. 165). Such goals do not necessarilyaffect the amount of motivation a student has for performing in a givensituation. Instead, they affect the quality of the motivation, which affectsbehavioral, cognitive, and affective outcomes (cf. Ames, 1992). Theseachievement goals are thought to be fairly stable but have been shown to besomewhat malleable depending on the demands of the learning environment(Ames, 1984, 1992; Ames & Archer, 1988; Elliott & Dweck, 1988; Maehr &Midgley, 1991; Midgley, Anderman, & Hicks, 1995). This is the definitionof goals that I will use in this paper.

Social relationships among children and adolescents have also been exam-ined from a variety of perspectives including, for example, close friends(Berndt & Keefe, 1992; Epstein, 1983, 1989), cliques and crowds (Brown,1989; Eder, 1985), and the larger peer group (Coleman, 1961; Fordham &Ogbu, 1986). In addition, a number of studies have examined social relation-ship issues by asking students to think about fictionalized characters in theirage group (e.g., Berndt, 1979; Juvonen & Murdock, 1993). In the presentstudy, social relationships are defined as students’ relationships with theirclosest friend or friends. Although close friendships involve a wide range ofattitudes and behaviors, in this study participants were asked to think aboutschool-related beliefs and behaviors. Specifically, students responded to ques-tions about the attitudes that they and their close friends shared regardingschool and academic achievement, perceived pressure from friends to do well(or not do well) academically, and willingness to sacrifice achievement forthe sake of maintaining relationships with friends.

Using these definitions of goals and social relationships, the purpose ofthis study was to examine the relations among a sample of eighth gradestudents’ achievement goals and their associations with friends who were

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP

167GOALS AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

positively or negatively oriented toward academic achievement. Achieve-ment goal theory has enriched our understanding of student motivationand achievement in school. This understanding should be further enhancedby adding social relationships to our examination of goals because socialrelationships are such an integral part of students’ lives (particularly earlyadolescent students) and because social constructs have largely been leftout of achievement goal theory research (Blumenfeld, 1992; Urdan &Maehr, 1995). In addition, by examining social variables using an estab-lished motivational framework, this study provides an initial attempt tobegin understanding friendship selection from an achievement goal theoryperspective. A brief examination of findings from research examining so-cial relationship variables and achievement motivation and from researchon achievement goals will provide insights regarding the possible linksbetween achievement goals and social relationships.

RESEARCH ON FRIENDS

Early investigations of the links between social and achievement motivessuggested that the need for achievement was inversely related to the need foraffiliation (e.g., Atkinson & O’Connor, 1966; Harter, 1975; Murray, 1938;Schneider & Green, 1977). Coleman (1961), in his seminal work on the livesof adolescents in school, found that students generally did not view highacademic achievement as the route to popularity. Horner (1972) found thatwomen may actually be motivated to not succeed by the fear that successmay carry with it social costs. This early work examining the links betweensocial relationships and achievement motivation suggested that wanting toachieve academically was inversely related with wanting to maintain positivesocial relationships, perhaps particularly for female students.

More recent research, however, has demonstrated that friends can influenceeach other in either positive or negative ways regarding academic attitudesand achievement. For example, Epstein (1983) found that, over the course ofa year, early adolescent students’ academic aspirations and achievement eitherimproved or declined depending on the school-related attitudes and achieve-ment of their closest friends. She argued that the process whereby friendsinfluenced each other’s academic aspirations and achievement was a cyclicalone: Friends select each other partly on the basis of similar attitudes aboutschool, those attitudes grow more similar over time, and new friends areselected partly on the basis of these altered attitudes (Epstein, 1989). Kinder-man (1993) reported that the motivation of students in the same naturallyformed peer groups was similar and that the motivational level of the groupstayed fairly constant over the course of a school year despite considerablefluctuation in group membership. He argued that students form peer groupsat the beginning of the year, partly on the basis of similar motivational levels,then socialize new members of the group to be similarly engaged. The cyclical

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


nature of peer and friend influence suggests that the issue of friend selection isvirtually impossible to disentangle from the issue of friend influence regardingacademic attitudes and behaviors. Causal arguments (e.g., that friends affecteach other’s motivation to achieve in school rather than that motivationallevel was the basis for friend selection) are very difficult to support.

How do we reconcile the early research that found affiliation and achieve-ment motives to be in conflict with more recent findings suggesting thatfriends can exert positive as well as negative influence on each other’s aca-demic beliefs and behaviors? Berndt and Keefe (1992) suggested that oneway may be to focus on the values of the friends with whom students associate:

Most researchers now assume that peers can have either a negative or a positiveinfluence on adolescents’ attitudes and behavior. In particular, peers can either encour-age adolescents to view their school experiences positively, or encourage them to seeschool as an uninteresting or hostile place. The outcomes for any specific adolescentdepend on the characteristics of the peers with whom the adolescent spends most ofhis or her time. (p. 51)

A number of other factors may be worth considering as well. Specifically,the links between students’ social relationships and their motivation to achievein school may depend on (a) how achievement is defined, (b) how the selfis defined in relation to others, and (c) the interaction of (a) and (b).

Achievement can be defined in a variety of ways (Anderman & Maehr,1994; Maehr, 1974). This is the crux of achievement goal theory. For example,achievement may be defined as learning something new, improvement, ortaking on a challenging task. This definition of achievement is associatedwith a task goal orientation. Achievement may also be defined in terms ofdoing better than others or avoiding appearing less able than others (a relativeability goal orientation). Some students may feel successful if they are ableto do as little work as possible in school (a work-avoidance goal orientation),and others may believe that the purpose of achieving is to gain some extrinsicreward (an extrinsic goal orientation). Each of these goals may be related tosocial orientations in different ways. For example, when success is definedas doing better than others or competing for scarce rewards, social concernsand academic achievement motivation may be inversely related. Wanting toimprove one’s knowledge or skills, however, may be facilitated by workingcooperatively with friends and may create a complementary relationship be-tween social and achievement motives.

A number of researchers have argued that there are cultural and genderdifferences in the ways people think of themselves in relation to others (e.g.,Gilligan, 1982; Landrine, 1992; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, Leung,Villareal, & Clack, 1985). These researchers have argued that girls and womentend to view themselves as more interconnected to others in their in-group,whereas boys and men are more individualistic and separate from others.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


This difference in self-perception can manifest itself in the motivation andachievement behavior of students. For example, Eder (1985) found that earlyadolescent girls place a high value on equality, a value that may undermineachievement motivation if high achievement leads to sizable disparities be-tween one’s self and one’s friends. Similarly, Parsons and Goff (1980) sug-gested that what Horner identified as a fear of success among women mayactually be a distaste for the competitive or individualistic processes that leadto success in some fields, a distaste created by a greater sense among womenof self as connected with others. Phelan, Davidson, and Cao (1991) foundthat some high school students, particularly Hispanic American girls, werewilling to sacrifice academic achievement if their friends needed help. In theirreview of the literature, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) concluded that boys,more so than girls, are motivated by competitive situations.

These examples demonstrate that achievement motivation may depend, inpart, on how the self is defined in relation to others, how success is defined,and how these two factors interact. Those students with a more connected,collectivist view of self may be less motivated to achieve academically whenachievement is perceived to interfere with social obligations, such as helpingfriends or maintaining equality with them. When success at a task is definedin competitive terms, we may expect the link between social relationshipsand academic motivation to differ for students with different conceptions ofself, such as boys and girls. Girls, with a more collectivist, interpersonal viewof self, may perceive competitive tasks as incompatible with social concerns.Boys, on the other hand, often form friendships in the context of competitivegames (Thorne, 1986) and tend to have a more individualistic view of self andmay view competition as a goal that fits well within their conceptualization ofpositive social relationships.

A variety of methodologies have been employed to examine how peersand friends influence each other’s cognition, behavior, and performance. Someresearchers have tried to simply ask students if and how their friends influencethem in school, but these methods may have been too direct to yield validinformation. Berndt and Keefe (1992) reported that students may have haddifficulty answering such direct questions partly because friend influence mayoccur beneath the level of consciousness, through a process of identification.Others have measured peer influence using scenarios that students respondedto, purportedly projecting their own beliefs and attitudes onto fictional charac-ters (e.g., Berndt, 1979; Juvonen & Murdock, 1993). In this study, I soughtto measure social factors that might be related to students’ achievement goalsand performance in school. The aim was to develop social measures that weremore subtle than the direct questions that have been used in the past butless inferential than more projective scenario measures. In the present study,students were asked to report their perceptions of the ways in which theirclose friends encourage them or discourage them from doing their academic

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


work, the attitudes that they shared with their friends regarding effort andachievement in school (positive and negative), and their willingness to sacri-fice academic achievement for the sake of maintaining their friendships. Theseperceptions were then merged into two general variables, one representing apositive orientation of friends toward academic achievement and effort andthe other representing a general negative orientation of friends.

RESEARCH ON ACHIEVEMENT GOALS

Research examining achievement goals has typically contrasted the cogni-tive, affective, and behavioral correlates of task and relative ability goals.This research has consistently demonstrated that students have a more positivemotivational and behavioral profile when they are task-oriented than whenthey are relative ability-oriented (see Ames, 1992; Midgley, 1993 for reviews).Task-oriented students have been shown to persist longer when confrontedwith failure or difficulty and report less negative affect in failure conditions(e.g., Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Elliott & Dweck, 1988), use more deep levelcognitive processing strategies (e.g., Graham & Golan, 1991; Meece, Blumen-feld & Hoyle, 1988; Nolen, 1988), have more positive feelings about school(Ames, 1990; Meece et al., 1988), attribute academic successes and failures toeffort rather than ability (Dweck & Leggett, 1988), and feel more efficacious(Ames & Archer, 1988; Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996) than when theyare relative ability-oriented. These different motivational orientations and theoutcomes associated with them have led some theorists to label task goalorientations as more ‘‘adaptive’’ than ability goal orientations (Ames, 1992;Dweck & Leggett, 1988).

Despite the clear benefits of pursuing task goals, it is not entirely clearthat relative ability goals are maladaptive. For example, research has notconsistently demonstrated that relative ability-oriented students have loweracademic achievement (grades, test scores) than task-oriented students. Insome studies, task and relative ability goals have been positively correlated,indicating that students may actually be more likely to be task-oriented ifthey are relative ability-oriented (e.g., Midgley & Urdan, 1995). Relativeability goals have been found positively related to self-deprecation, self-handicapping, and positive attitudes about the benefits of education (Midgley,Arunkumar & Urdan, 1996). Recent examinations of students’ simultaneouspursuit of multiple goals have produced mixed results. Meece and Holt (1993)found that relatively high levels of relative ability goal orientation (called‘‘ego’’ goals in their study), in conjunction with high task goal pursuit (called‘‘mastery’’ goals in their study) was associated with lower academic perfor-mance and higher superficial engagement than when students were only highin task goal orientation. Urdan (1996), in contrast, found that high levels ofrelative ability goal pursuit was not associated with less adaptive motivationaland behavioral outcomes when students were also high in task goal endorse-

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


ment. Taken together, these results suggest that relative ability goals may notbe universally detrimental. Rather, the effects of relative ability goals maydiffer according to the characteristics of the student and the academic task(Elliott & Harackiewicz, 1996).

Although task and relative ability goals have received the bulk of theattention in goal theory research, other types of goals have been examined. Forexample, students may perceive that the purpose of achieving academically isto gain some extrinsic reward or avoid punishment. These perceptions repre-sent extrinsic goals (Maehr, 1984) and have been shown to be conceptuallyand empirically distinct from task and relative ability goals (Midgley,Maehr, & Urdan, 1993). Extrinsic goals are conceptually similar to extrinsicmotivation, as discussed by a number of motivation researchers (e.g., Harter,1981; Lepper & Hodell, 1989). Research examining extrinsic motivation hastypically demonstrated decreases in interest and performance when studentsare extrinsically oriented (Deci & Ryan, 1985). However, the negative effectsassociated with extrinsic motivation have generally been slight and may per-tain only to tasks in which intrinsic motivation was initially present (Ca-meron & Pierce, 1994). When intrinsic motivation is low, extrinsic motivationcan bolster effort and performance (Pintrich & Garcia, 1991).

Task, relative ability, and extrinsic goals, as they have been operationalizedin most goal theory research, all represent approach motivation. That is, allthree of these goal orientations represent a desire to achieve academically,albeit for different reasons. A fourth type of goal, effort avoidance, has alsoreceived some attention in goal theory research (Meece et al., 1988; Nicholls,Patashnick, & Nolen, 1985). When pursuing effort avoidance goals, studentsare concerned with finishing work as quickly as possible and exerting as littleeffort as possible. Holding an effort avoidance goal orientation has beenassociated with students’ beliefs that success in school is caused by extrinsicfactors, such as behaving well in class, rather than intrinsic factors such aseffort (Nicholls, Cobb, Wood, Yackel, & Patashnick, 1990) and with lessvaluing and less frequent use of learning strategies (Nolen, 1988). Becausethe four types of goals (task, ability, extrinsic, and effort avoidance) allrepresent different orientations toward academic achievement and effort, twoobjectives of the present study were to determine whether early adolescentstudents were able to distinguish between these goals and to examine therelations among each of these four goals and social constructs.

HYPOTHESES

Students were expected to differ in their scores on the positive and negativeorientation of friends scales according to achievement level and gender. Highachieving students were expected to associate with friends who value aca-demic effort and achievement, whereas low achieving students should bemore inclined to have friends with negative attitudes about achievement. In

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


addition, girls were predicted to associate with negatively oriented friendsless than boys on the basis of research findings that girls are less inclined tobe persuaded by peers to engage in antisocial activities (Berndt, 1979;Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986).

The primary objective of the present study was to examine the ways inwhich students’ associations with friends who were positively and negativelyoriented toward academic effort and achievement were related to theirachievement goals in school. The clear findings of previous research showingpositive motivational and behavioral correlates of task goals and negativecorrelates of effort avoidance goals suggest that having friends with positiveorientations toward school will be positively related to having a task goalorientation and negatively related to effort avoidance goals. Because wantingto learn and develop competence at school should be incompatible with associ-ating with friends who devalue effort and achievement, I predicted therewould be a negative relationship between task goals and having negativelyoriented friends. Similarly, sharing negative attitudes toward school withfriends was expected to correlate positively with feeling successful whenavoiding effort in school.

The predictions involving extrinsic and relative ability goals are less clear.Extrinsic rewards are typically associated with negative motivational andbehavioral outcomes if they are perceived by students to be superfluous andcontrolling. Therefore, if students perceive that extrinsic rewards are control-ling their behavior, we might expect extrinsic goals to represent a somewhatnegative orientation toward school and be positively related to the negativeorientation of friends scale. However, if students in this sample perceiveextrinsic purposes for achievement that are informational rather than control-ling, extrinsic goals may be positively related to associating with friends thatvalue and encourage academic achievement.

Finally, the relationship between the positive and negative orientation offriends variables and relative ability goals was expected to differ for studentsof different genders and ability levels. Because competition is less valuedand less salient in girls’ friendships than in boys’, relative ability goal pursuitshould be a more salient feature of boys friendships with positively orientedpeers than of girls. Predictions about the differences among high and lowachievers regarding the association between relative ability goals and socialrelationships are difficult to make. It may be that among high achievers,relative ability goals represent an adaptive motivational orientation and arepositively related to positive social orientation of friends. Among lowachievers, however, opportunities for favorable social comparisons are rare,and the pursuit of relative ability goals may reflect the desire to avoid ap-pearing unable. Among low achievers, then, relative ability goals might beassociated with the negative orientation of friends scale. These potentiallydiffering relationships for high and low achievers and for boys and girls may

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


create weak or nonsignificant main effects for the relationships between therelative ability goals and the two social orientation scales.

This study was designed to be exploratory as well as predictive. Toexamine the associations between achievement goals and the two socialrelationships constructs in the study, multivariate analyses were conductedto determine (a) the predictive strength of the two social orientation scaleson each of the goal measures, controlling for the effects of gender andgrade point average (GPA); and (b) the predictive strength of the goals,individually and as a group, on students’ simultaneous association with bothpositively and negatively oriented friends. Some students were expected tohave friends with both positive and negative attitudes about school, whereasothers were expected to have friends with more homogenous attitudes. Oneobjective of the present study was to determine the relative frequency ofstudents with each pattern of positive and negative friend orientation andthen determine how well students’ goals were able to predict these differentpatterns of friend orientation.

METHOD

SampleParticipants were 260 eighth-grade students (131 boys, 129 girls) from two middle schools in

one school district in Michigan. These middle schools serve students from Grades 6 to 8 andare located near a major metropolitan area in a community that can be characterized as primarilyworking-class.1 The sample was 87% Caucasian and 13% African-American, reflecting the racial/ethnic composition of the surrounding communities. Ten percent of the students in this studyreceived free or reduced fee lunches in school, based on level of family income. Data werecollected from participants in the final year of a 3-year study (see Maehr & Midgley, 1991).Parental permission was required and sought during the first year when participants were in thesixth grade. Seventy-nine percent of the students in the two schools received permission. Of the297 students that had been granted permission and remained in the two participating schools inthe eighth grade, 37 were not included in the final sample due to missing data, leaving a finalsample of 260. Participants in the two schools did not differ significantly on any of the variablesincluded in the study, so the samples were combined in all subsequent analyses.

MeasuresFour types of students’ achievement goals (task, relative ability, extrinsic, and effort avoid-

ance), two friendship orientation scales (one negative orientation of friends scale and one positiveorientation of friends scale), students’ gender, and their grade point average (GPA) from thefour core academic areas (English, math, science, and social studies) earned at the end of the

1 Census statistics (1990) indicated a median family income of about $40,000, with approxi-mately 6% of the families living in poverty. Many residents were employed in automobile-relatedindustries. The major occupations listed were traditional ‘‘blue collar’’ manufacturing jobs suchas precision production, craft, and repair persons; machine operators, assemblers, and inspectors;and administrative support and clerical positions. Eighty percent of the community residentssampled had completed high school, and about 15% had a bachelor’s degree or higher.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


second semester in eighth grade were examined. All variables except GPA were measured usingthe Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey (PALS) (Midgley, Maehr, & Urdan, 1993). All itemson the PALS were self-report and employed a 5-point Likert-type scale. The PALS includes 125statements, and participants were asked to rate how true each statement was for them (1 Å ‘‘Notat all true,’’ 5 Å ‘‘Very true’’).

All items assessing the four types of achievement goals were subjected to a principal compo-nents analysis. This analysis produced a four-factor solution that separated the variables into thefour a priori goal groups. All variables loaded at greater than .40 on their respective factors.Scales were produced for each of the four types of goals by averaging the items that representedeach goal type. The task goals scale consists of six items (Cronbach’s a Å 81). Sample itemsinclude ‘‘I like school work the best when it really makes me think’’ and ‘‘I like school workthat I’ll learn from even if I make a lot of mistakes.’’ The relative ability goals scale includesfive items (a Å .82) such as ‘‘I like school work that lets me show how smart I am’’ and ‘‘Ifeel good if I am the only one who can answer the teacher’s questions in class.’’ There werefive items in the extrinsic goal scale (a Å .72), including ‘‘I do my work because it’s required,not because I want to’’ and ‘‘The main reason I do my work is because we get grades.’’ Theeffort avoidance scale (a Å .80) includes four items, such as ‘‘I like school work best when Ican finish quickly’’ and ‘‘I like school work best when I can get the right answer without workingtoo hard.’’

Items designed to measure the positive and negative orientations of friends tapped into thenorms shared by participants and their friends, participants’ perceptions about pressure exertedby their friends regarding academic effort and achievement, and participants’ willingness to placesocial concerns before achievement concerns in school. Originally designed to measure differentaspects of students’ social–academic perceptions, principal components analyses revealed thatparticipants generally did not differentiate between norms, pressure, and social/academic priori-ties. Therefore, the items were merged into two factors: a general negative orientation of friendsfactor and a general positive orientation of friends scale. As was the case for the goals items,principal components analysis revealed that the positive and negative social items separated intotwo distinct factors and that all items loaded on their respective factors above the .40 level.

The positive orientation of friends (POF) scale includes five items (a Å .81) that reflect bothgroup norms (e.g., ‘‘Doing well in school is important to us’’) and pressure from friends (e.g.,‘‘My friends encourage me to do my schoolwork’’). The negative orientation of friends (NOF)scale contains eight items (a Å .79) that tap into group norms (e.g., ‘‘We think kids who dowell in school are nerds’’), pressure from friends (e.g., ‘‘Sometimes my friends discourage mefrom doing my schoolwork’’), and placing social concerns above academic concerns (e.g., ‘‘Tobe accepted by my friends, I sometimes let my schoolwork slip’’). To distinguish close friendsfrom acquaintances, participants were asked to think about their closest friends before answeringthe friend orientation items.

Participants’ grades for each of the four core academic subjects were collected from theiracademic records and were averaged together to form an overall GPA, which was measuredon a 14 point scale (0 Å ‘‘F,’’ 13 Å ‘‘A/’’).

ProcedureSurveys were administered to students during one class period (approximately forty minutes)

and were read aloud by trained research assistants. Participants were given instructions in theuse of Likert-type scales and were encouraged to ask questions during survey administration ifanything was unclear. They were assured that the information they provided would be confiden-tial, and surveys were removed from the school sites immediately after the students had completedthem.

AnalysisBecause the data in this study were correlational, analyses designed to assess the causal

relationships among the goals and social relationships measures were not warranted. Moreover,

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


the bidirectional influence of achievement motivation and friend selection described by others(e.g., Berndt & Keefe, 1992; Epstein, 1983) cautions against causal analysis or inference. There-fore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relations among students’ achievement goalsand the two orientation of friends scales using a variety of multivariate and univariate analyses.First, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and bivariate correlations were computed to determinewhether students differed in their goal pursuit and associations with positively and negativelyoriented friends on the bases of gender and achievement level. Next, hierarchical regression wasused to examine both the main and interaction effects of gender, GPA, and the two friendshiporientation scales on each of the four dependent goal measures. In the first step of the regressions,the main effects predictors were entered. In the second step, product–term interaction variableswere entered in a stepwise method. Because of the high multicollinearity among the product–term interactions, a stepwise method was selected to determine the most significant interactionterms and to reduce error associated with including nonsignificant interaction terms in the model.To reduce multicollinearity among the interaction terms and the main effects variables, thecontinuous predictor variables were centered around their means before the product terms werecomputed (see Jaccard, Turrisi, & Wan, 1990 for a description). All possible two-way and three-way interactions between the predictors (gender, GPA, and the two friendship orientation scales)were examined.

Another question of interest in this study was the extent to which students felt that theyassociated with close friends who were relatively homogeneous in their attitudes about academicachievement or whether they had friends with varied attitudes. To identify these different groupsof students, the two friendship orientation scales were combined to create a four-category variable.To create the four groups students scores were divided into two groups on each of the friendshiporientation scales: those scoring at the 40th percentile and below and those scoring at the 60thpercentile or above. Dividing students at these percentiles allowed me to maintain adequatenumbers of participants in each of the four groups while avoiding separating students withvirtually identical scores on a variable into different groups, as often occurs when doing mediansplits. Students in the low group on the NOF scale had scores of 1.88 or lower whereas studentsin the high NOF group scored 2.25 or higher on the NOF scale. Participants with scores of 3.20or lower on the POF scale were placed in the low group and students with scores of 3.60 orhigher were considered to be in the high group. This produced four groups: the low-low group(n Å 27); the low NOF high POF group (n Å 78); the high NOF low POF group (n Å 72), andthe high-high group (n Å 36). Forty-seven cases were eliminated because they scored near themedian on one or both of the friend orientation scales, leaving a sample of 213.2

Once the four social orientation groups were formed, a discriminant analysis was conductedto gain further insights regarding the relations among goals and social orientations of friends.When analyzing differences between the levels of a single factor on multiple dependent variables,both discriminant analysis and multivariate analysis of variance will provide identical multivariatetests of differences between groups on the combination of continuous criterion variables (SPSS-X User’s Guide, 3rd edition, 1988). Discriminant analysis was selected because it provides asimple way to examine the strength of the relationship between a single continuous variable andthe multilevel factor while holding the effects of other continuous variables constant. This allowed

2 The 47 cases that were dropped during the creation of the four friendship groups wereexamined to determine whether they represented a cohesive, ‘‘middle’’ group that were in themiddle on both the POF and NOF scales. Of the 47 cases, only 9 had scores that were in themiddle range on both the POF and NOF scales. The remaining students were in the middle onone of the friendship orientation sales but either high or low on the other friendship orientationscale. Therefore, this group of cases did not represent an organized class and was inappropriatefor inclusion in subsequent analyses.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


TABLE 1CORRELATIONS AND DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR ALL VARIABLES (N Å 260)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Positive orientation of friends —2. Negative orientation of friends 0.47 —3. Task goals .53 0.39 —4. Relative ability goals .18 .06 .13 —5. Extrinsic goals 0.16 .49 0.30 .42 —6. Effort avoidance goals 0.23 .45 0.47 .26 .54 —7. Grade point average .35 0.43 .25 .22 0.01 0.21 —8. Gender a .22 0.16 .08 0.23 0.06 0.16 .08

Mean (Total sample) 3.48 2.13 3.26 3.08 2.56 3.09 8.12(SD) .84 .74 .80 .96 .84 .91 2.94Boys 3.30a 2.26a 3.19a 3.31a 2.72a 3.24a 7.78a

.84 .76 .81 .95 .87 .90 3.05Girls 3.67b 2.00a 3.33a 2.85b 2.40b 2.95a 8.46a

.81 .70 .79 .91 .78 .91 2.80

Note. Means with different subscripts indicate significant differences between the means atp õ .008.

a Gender was coded 0 Å boys, 1 Å girls.

me to assess the overall strength of the relationship between the combination of goals and thefriendship groups after accounting for variance explained by GPA and gender and excluding anynon-significant goals from the analysis. In this instance, discriminant analysis was used to examinethe power of each goal, and multiple goals, to discriminate between friendship orientation groups,not to classify cases.

RESULTS

Correlation and ANCOVA Results

Bivariate correlations among all eight of the variables in the study (the POFand NOF scales, the four types of goals, GPA, and gender) were calculated andare reported, along with means and standard deviations for the whole sampleand for boys and girls separately, in Table 1. These statistics indicate that,on average, participants reported associating with positively oriented friendsmore than with negatively oriented friends (MPOF Å 3.48, MNOF Å 2.13,t (259) Å 16.08, p õ .001). Associating with positively oriented friends wasmost strongly correlated with holding a task goal orientation and GPA. TheNOF scale was most strongly, positively correlated with extrinsic and effortavoidance goals and was negatively related to GPA and task goals. The twofriendship orientation scales were moderately, negatively correlated(r Å 0.47). The four goal orientation scales were weakly to moderatelycorrelated with the strongest correlation between extrinsic and effort avoid-

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


ance goals (r Å .54). Ability and task goals were weakly, positively correlatedin this sample.

ANCOVAs were conducted to determine whether boys and girls differedon each of the four goal measures and on the POF and NOF scales. Testsfor homogeneity of variance between boys and girls indicated that this as-sumption was not violated in any of the analyses. The unadjusted meanspresented in Table 1 indicate that, after controlling for GPA and adjustingfor the number of analysis being conducted, girls were more likely than boysto associate with positively oriented friends (F(1,257) Å 10.34, p õ .001),and less likely to pursue either extrinsic (F(1,257) Å 9.021, p õ .003) orrelative ability goals (F(1,257)Å 20.43, põ .001). Contrary to the hypothesis,boys and girls did not differ on the negative orientation of friends scalewhen controlling for GPA. With the Bonferonni adjustment, differences wereconsidered significant at the p õ .05 level if the observed p õ .008.

Regression Results

To examine the multivariate relations among the variables, four separatehierarchical regressions were conducted. In each of these regressions, a differ-ent type of achievement goal was first regressed on the two orientations offriends variables, GPA, and gender. In the second step of these regressions,interaction terms were entered into the regression. The standardized regressioncoefficients, F values, intercepts, and adjusted R2 for each of the regressionsare presented in Table 2.

With task goals as the dependent variable, gender and GPA were notsignificant predictors. The positive orientation of friends scale was the strong-est predictor of task goals (b Å .42, p õ .001). The negative orientation offriends scale was a significant, negative predictor of task goal pursuit (b Å0.20, p õ .001), and the overall model accounted for 29% of the variancein task goals. With ability goals as the dependent variable, all four of thepredictors were significant. After controlling for the effects of gender andGPA, both the positive orientation of friends and the negative orientation offriends scales were positively related to ability goals (b Å .29, p õ .001, bÅ .23, p õ .001 for the POF and NOF scales, respectively). After controllingfor the significant relations between GPA and gender on extrinsic goals, theNOF scale emerged as a strong, positive predictor (b Å .55, p õ .001). Thenegative orientation of friends scale was also a strong predictor of effortavoidance goals (b Å .52, p õ .001), and was the only significant predictorof those goals, accounting for 18% of the variance.

Interactions

The four variables used in the first step of the hierarchical regression analysis(GPA, gender, POF, and NOF scales) comprise the basic regression model. Interac-tion terms were computed for all possible two-way interactions between these four

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


TA

BL

E2

ST

AN

DA

RD

IZE

DR

EG

RE

SS

ION

CO

EF

FIC

IEN

TS,

INT

ER

CE

PT

S,

AN

DA

DJU

ST

ED

R2

FO

RM

UL

TIP

LE

RE

GR

ES

SIO

NA

NA

LY

SE

S(NÅ

260)

Eff

.av

oid

Eff

.av

oid

Tas

kE

xtri

nsic

Rel

ativ

eab

ilit

yR

elat

ive

abil

ity

goal

sgo

als

goal

sgo

als

goal

s(S

tep

1)go

als

(Ste

p2)

(Ste

p1)

(Ste

p2)

Ste

p1:

Pre

dict

ors

Gen

der

ns0

.11*

0.2

9***

0.2

9***

nsns

GP

Ans

.21*

**.2

3***

.22*

**ns

nsP

osit

ive

orie

ntat

ion

offr

iend

s.4

2***

ns.2

9***

.40*

**ns

nsN

egat

ive

orie

ntat

ion

offr

iend

s0

.20*

**.5

5***

.23*

**.2

3***

.44*

**.4

5***

Ste

p2:

Inte

ract

ions

GP

A1

PO

F0

.17*

*G

ende

r1

PO

F0

.17*

GP

A1

NO

Fns

.14*

Inte

rcep

t3.

262.

653.

353.

443.

093.

15F

valu

e53

.64*

**32

.88*

**14

.38*

**13

.20*

**59

.18*

**22

.41*

**C

hang

ein

R2

——

—.0

5**

—.0

2**

Adj

uste

dR

2.2

9.2

7.1

7.2

2.1

8.2

0

Not

e.In

terc

epts

,F

valu

es,

and

adju

sted

R2

wer

eco

mpu

ted

wit

hout

nons

igni

fica

ntpr

edic

tors

inth

em

odel

.G

ende

rw

asco

ded

boysÅ

0,gi

rlsÅ

1.*põ

.05,

**põ

.01,

***põ

.001

.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


FIG. 1. (Left) Interaction of positive orientation of friends and sex on ability goals. (Right)Interaction of positive orientation of friends and GPA on ability goals.

predictor variables and the significant interactions were then added to the model.In addition, all possible three-way interactions were tested. These tests producedno significant interactions on any of the four dependent goals measures. In themodels with task goals or extrinsic goals as the dependent variables, there wereno significant two-way interactions. With ability goals as the dependent variable,there were two significant two-way interactions. There was one significant two-way interaction when effort avoidance goals was the dependent variable.

The significant interactions for the ability goals model were the POF 1 genderinteraction (b Å 0.17, p õ .05) and the GPA 1 POF interaction (b Å 0.17, põ .01). These interactions are presented graphically in Fig. 1. The POF 1 genderinteraction indicated that the relationship between the POF scale and ability goalswas weaker for girls than for boys. T tests were computed to determine whetherthe regression slopes for boys and girls were significant. Results indicated that therelationship between ability goals and the positive orientation of friends scales wassignificant for boys (t (253) Å 3.47, p õ .001), whereas it was not for girls (t(253) Å 1.06, ns). The GPA 1 POF interaction revealed that as GPA increased,the relationship between POF and ability goals became weaker.

The significant interaction in the model with effort avoidance goals as thedependent variable was the NOF 1 GPA interaction (b Å .14, p õ .05). Thisinteraction is presented graphically in Fig. 2. As GPA increased, the relationshipbetween effort avoidance goals and the NOF scale became stronger.

Results for Combined POF and NOF Scales

The correlation between the two friendship orientations scales was r Å0.47. This correlation indicated that the two orientation of friends scales

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


FIG. 2. Interaction of negative orientation of friends and GPA on effort avoidance goals.

were not two poles on a continuum. Rather, some students scored relativelyhigh on both the POF and the NOF scales, whereas some scored relativelylow on both scales. Therefore, I combined the two scales to create a four-category nominal variable. An examination of gender differences in groupmembership produced a significant chi-squared statistic (x2 (3) Å 12.72,p õ .01). Girls were overrepresented in the Low NOF-High POF groupwhereas boys were overrepresented in the High NOF-Low POF group.Therefore, gender was included, along with GPA, as a covariate in allsubsequent analyses.

To determine the discriminating power of the goals on the combined posi-tive and negative orientation of friends variable, a discriminant analysis wasconducted. Gender and GPA were simultaneously entered into the discrimi-nant function model first in order to determine the discriminating power ofthe goals above and beyond the discriminating power of GPA and gender.The four goals were added to the discriminant function model simultaneously,producing the full model.

Gender and GPA accounted for 22% of the variance among the four friend-ship orientation groups (Wilks l (2,209) Å .78, p õ .001). When the fourgoals were added to the model, they explained an additional 33% of thevariance in the four friendship orientation groups beyond that which wasexplained by GPA and gender. An examination of the canonical coefficientsindicated that relative ability goals were not strongly associated with any ofthe functions and did not significantly affect the Wilkes l. Therefore, relativeability goals were removed and the model was rerun with only the other threegoals added to the model in the second step. The full model produced three

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


TABLE 3MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND F RATIOS FOR THE FOUR FRIENDSHIP GROUPS

ON THE THREE GOAL MEASURES

Low NOF- Low NOF- High NOF- High NOF-low POF high POF low POF high POFN Å 27 N Å 78 N Å 72 N Å 36 F Ratioa

Task goals 3.25a 3.70b 2.72c 3.43a,b 18.37***(.76) (.65) (.69) (.84)

Extrinsic goals 2.10a 2.15a 2.88b 3.15b 23.82***(.77) (.74) (.80) (.80)

Effort avoidance goals 2.45a 2.74a 3.52b 3.36b 14.41***(.69) (.84) (.86) (.81)

Grade point average 8.96a 9.17a 6.39b 7.99a 11.47***1.94 2.73 2.83 2.75

Note. Different subscripts indicate significant differences between group means at the p õ .05level using Tukey HSD procedure.

a F ratios were computed with GPA and gender as covariates for the analyses in which goalswere the dependent variables. Goals and gender were used as covariates when GPA was thedependent variable.

***p õ .001.

significant discriminant functions that explained 55% of the variance in thedependent measure (Wilks l (5,209) Å .45, p õ .001). The first functionaccounted for 70% of the explained variance and was indicated roughlyequally by task and extrinsic goals (standardized coefficients of 0.58 and .51for task and extrinsic goals respectively). The second function accounted for26% of the explained variance and was indicated predominantly by task goals.The third function, accounting for only 4% of the explained variance, wasindicated by effort avoidance and extrinsic goals.

After determining that the goals, as a group, explained a significant percent-age of the variance in the combined positive–negative friendship orientationvariable, univariate ANCOVAs were conducted to determine how the fourfriendship groups differed on each of the three goal measures that significantlydiscriminated between the groups (i.e., task, extrinsic, and effort avoidancegoals) controlling for GPA and gender and on the achievement measurecontrolling for goals and gender. Tests for homogeneity of variance betweenthe four friendship groups indicated that the homogeneity of variance assump-tion was met in all four ANCOVA analyses, so Tukey post-hoc analyses wereconducted using the harmonic adjustment for different sample sizes. Theresults of these ANCOVAs are summarized in Table 3.

As expected on the basis of the discriminant analysis, all of the ANCOVAsproduced significant F ratios. For the analysis involving task goals, post-hocanalysis revealed that students in the low-negative, high positive orientation

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


of friends group scored significantly higher than students in either the low-low group or the high negative, low positive group. Students in the high-negative, low-positive orientation of friends group scored significantly lowerthan all other groups in their pursuit of task goals. The results for extrinsicand effort avoidance goals revealed that the four groups differed accordingto scores on the negative friend orientation scale and not on their positivefriend orientation scores. For both extrinsic and effort avoidance goals, stu-dents in the two low-negative friend orientation groups scored significantlylower than students in the two high-negative friend orientation groups. Aftercontrolling for the effects of gender and goals, students with high scores onthe NOF scale and low scores on the POF scale had significantly lower gradesthan students in the other three social orientation groups.

DISCUSSION

To gain a better understanding of the factors that affect academic engage-ment and performance during early adolescence it may be useful to examinethe ways in which multiple agents of engagement and performance interact.Social relationships with peers and achievement goals are two factors, largelyexamined separately, that have been shown to affect students’ attitudes, cogni-tions, and behaviors in school. One purpose of this study was to examinegender and achievement level differences in students’ associations withfriends who were positively or negatively oriented toward academic achieve-ment and effort. The larger purpose of this study was to examine the relationsamong a sample of eighth grade students’ goals and their tendencies to associ-ate with positively or negatively oriented friends.

Differences by Gender and Achievement

As expected, higher achieving students were more likely to associate withfriends who valued and encouraged academic effort and achievement whereaslow achieving students were more likely to have negatively oriented friends.Although friends may spend little time actually talking to each other explicitlyabout school (Berndt & Keefe, 1992), it does appear that there is someconsistency between how well students achieve and the orientation of theirfriends toward achievement. A lack of consistency between achievement striv-ings and social relationships would likely lead a student to either changebehavior and attitudes or change friends to reduce the conflict (Epstein, 1989;Kinderman, 1993).

Contrary to my hypothesis, boys and girls did not differ in their tendenciesto associate with negatively oriented friends. Previous research that has foundboys to be more susceptible to the negative influence of peers examined earlyadolescents’ proclivities for engaging in delinquent or antisocial acts (e.g.,Berndt, 1979). This type of antisocial behavior is more severe than the typeof negative orientation of friends measure used in the present study, and may

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


be more likely to produce gender differences. There was a main effect forgender on the positive orientation of friends scale. After controlling forachievement, girls were more likely than boys to report having friends thatsupported and encouraged academic effort and achievement. Part of this find-ing may be explained by the fact that some of the items in the positiveorientation of friends scale involve getting support and encouragement fromfriends. Girls relationships, perhaps more than boys, are marked by a senseof caring and support that would produce this type of encouragement (Gilli-gan, 1982; Landrine, 1992; Parker & Gottman, 1989). The relationship be-tween gender and the positive orientation of friends scale was moderated byrelative ability goals, however, suggesting a more complex relationship thanis implied by the main effect. This interaction is discussed below.

Relations among Goals and Social Relationship Variables

On the basis of previous research on social relationships, achievementgoal theory, and gender differences in conceptions of self and achievement,hypothesis were generated regarding the relations between achievement goalsand the social relationship variables. For the most part, these hypotheses wereconfirmed. When students are task-goal oriented, they are concerned withlearning, improvement, and taking on challenging work. This approach tolearning is incompatible with associating with friends who devalue academiceffort and achievement. Instead, task-goal oriented students would be expectedto associate with students who value and encourage achievement in school.The results of the regression analysis and the discriminant analysis confirmedthat task goals were related to the positive and negative orientation of friendsscales in predicted ways. This finding supports previous findings documentingthe positive correlates of pursuing task goals and extends them to the socialdomain (e.g., Ames, 1984; Ames & Archer, 1988; Dweck & Leggett, 1988;Maehr & Anderman, 1993; Meece & Holt, 1993; Meece et al., 1988; Midgleyet al., 1995; Nicholls, 1984; Nicholls et al., 1985; Pintrich, 1989). In addition,it supports research on social relationships that has demonstrated the positiveand negative motivational correlates of spending time with positively or nega-tively oriented friends (e.g., Epstein, 1983).

The results of the analyses involving extrinsic, relative ability, and effortavoidance goals were more complex than those involving task goals. Theregression analysis involving extrinsic goals indicated that they were posi-tively related to achievement but also strongly, positively related to associatingwith negatively oriented friends. This is somewhat paradoxical. The nonsig-nificant zero-order correlation between GPA and extrinsic goals, coupled withthe positive relationship between GPA and extrinsic goals in the regressionanalysis when controlling for the negative orientation of friends, suggests thatextrinsic goals may have a more negative association with achievement fornegatively oriented students than for other students. A number of researchers

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


have argued that extrinsic rewards may undermine intrinsic motivation andperformance when the rewards are perceived as controlling and superfluous(Deci & Ryan, 1985; Lepper & Hodell, 1989). When students spend timewith friends who devalue academic achievement and effort, these friends maysubtly or overtly encourage students to view rewards in a controlling way.Although students who chose to spend time with negatively oriented friendsare likely to adopt an extrinsic goal orientation, this orientation does notappear to represent a positive, or adaptive, motivational orientation. Thisrelationship needs further exploration.

Not surprisingly, students concerned with avoiding effort in school werealso more likely to associate with negatively oriented friends. Interestingly,the significant interaction between achievement and the negative orientationof friends scale on effort avoidance goals revealed a stronger relationshipbetween effort avoidance and negative orientation of friends among higherachievers than among lower achievers. Perhaps higher achievers with nega-tively oriented friends feel more pressure to avoid exerting effort than do lowachievers. Some research suggests that one way of balancing high achieve-ment and social relationships with negatively oriented peers is to try to hideone’s effort in school from peers (e.g., Fordham & Ogbu, 1986). For thesehigh achieving students with negatively oriented friends, consistent concernsover hiding effort in school from peers may make effort avoidance goalsmore salient.

Perhaps the most interesting results involve the analyses examining relativeability goals. First, the regression and discriminant analyses both indicatedthat, or all the goals, relative ability goals had the weakest main-effect relation-ship with the social relationship variables. Second, as found in previousresearch, relative ability goals continued to correlate positively with both‘‘adaptive’’ and ‘‘maladaptive’’ variables (e.g., positive and negative orienta-tion of friends, GPA). Some of this paradox can, perhaps, be understood bythe significant interactions that emerged in the regression analysis. First, aspredicted, relative ability goals were positively related to associating withpositively oriented friends only for boys. This result, along with the maineffect for gender, indicated that not only were boys more competitively ori-ented than girls, but also that competition is associated with sharing favorableattitudes toward achievement with friends for boys. This finding fits well withresearch and theory suggesting that males and females may define achieve-ment and think about relationships differently. Males, who define themselvesand achievement in more competitive and individualistic terms and oftendevelop friendships in competitive situations (e.g., sports), are more likely tointegrate competition into their positively oriented friendships than are girls,who place a greater emphasis on equality among friends (Gilligan, 1982;Eder, 1985; Triandis et al., 1985).

The interaction involving GPA and the positive orientation of friends scale

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


lends further support to the emerging evidence that relative ability goals maynot necessarily be maladaptive. This interaction indicates that there is nodifference in the pursuit of relative ability goals among students with friendswho value and encourage academic achievement. As students decreased intheir scores on the positive orientation of friends scale, however, lower achiev-ing students were less relative ability goal oriented than were higher achievers.It makes sense that lower achieving students would be less concerned withwanting to compare themselves to other students because social comparisonwould cast the low achiever in an unfavorable light. What the present studyadds to the equation is the finding that the expected decline in relative abilitygoal endorsement actually disappears among students who spend time withfriends who value and encourage achievement in school. It is unclear whyassociating with positively oriented friends would be related to increasedability goal endorsement among low achievers. One partial explanation maybe that in this study, only one dimension of relative ability goals was mea-sured. Elliott and Harackiewicz (1996) recently demonstrated that relativeability goals have approach (wanting to demonstrate competence) and avoid-ance (wanting to avoid appearing incompetent) components. In addition, theyfound that the approach component was associated with adaptive motivationaland performance outcomes whereas the avoidance component was not. In thepresent study, only the approach component was measured. Future studiesneed to examine the relationship between friendship orientation, performance,and both components of relative ability goals.

The Combined Positive and Negative Orientation of Friends Scale

For the most part, students that were relatively high in their ratings of oneof the friendship orientation scales were low in their scores on the other.The positive and negative friendship orientation scales were not orthogonal,however. Twenty-seven students were in the bottom 40% of scores on bothof the friendship orientation scales, whereas 36 students were in the top 40%of scores on both scales.

The results of the ANCOVAs comparing the four social orientationgroups produced interesting evidence of a ‘‘buffering’’ effect of havingpositively oriented friends. For the analyses involving task goals and GPA,students scoring high on the negative orientation of friends scale and lowon the positive orientation of friends scale had the lowest means. Studentsin the group with high NOF and high POF scores had significantly highergrades and were significantly more task-goal oriented than students whowere only high on the NOF scale, indicating that the negative effects ofassociating with negatively oriented friends can be offset, at least partially,by having positively oriented friends. Interestingly, this buffering effectdid not appear when extrinsic or effort avoidance goals were examined.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


It is not clear why associating with positively oriented friends was weaklyrelated to these two types of goals.

A Word about Achievement

Studies of achievement goals have often not examined or, when examined,found only weak relationships between goals and achievement. Some goaltheorists have argued that there are important cognitive, affective, and behav-ioral outcomes besides GPA that are related to students’ goals about whicheducators and researchers should be concerned (e.g., Ames, 1992; Nichollset al., 1985). In the present study, goals were only weakly correlated withachievement. I would caution against the interpretation that these weak corre-lations suggest goals are not important for two reasons. First, the weak rela-tionship between goals and GPA may indicate that something undesirable isgoing on in schools. Why would a desire to learn, take on challenging work,and improve skills (task goals) not be more strongly related to GPA? Whyare effort avoidance goals not more strongly negatively related to GPA? Itmay be that the work students are given in school, and the basis for evaluation,do not reward challenge seeking and placing mastery above getting an A onone’s list of priorities (Jussim, 1991). Second, it may be that goals affectmotivation through their relationship with other variables rather than directly.For example, in the present study students’ goals were related to their associa-tions with positively and negatively oriented friends, which in turn wererelated to GPA. Future research examining both the indirect effects of goalson achievement and the instructional practices that weaken the direct linkbetween goals and achievement is needed.

Implications and Limitations

The results of this study have implications for the study of social constructsas well as for the study of goals. First, as others have noted, it is very difficultto study the social influence process among early adolescents in school(Berndt & Keefe, 1992; Epstein, 1983; Urdan & Hicks, 1995). Participants inthis study reported being significantly more likely to associate with positivelyoriented friends than with negatively oriented friends. Although this findingmay accurately reflect the nature of students’ relationships in school, thefrequent laments of educators and parents that their children are negativelyaffected by their peers in schools raises the concern that participants mayhave been responding to these questions in somewhat socially desirable ways.Second, we may best develop an understanding of the ways in which socialand academic concerns are related by examining social goals directly ratherthan the less direct measures of social orientation of friends used in the presentstudy. Developing a reliable measure of students’ social-academic goals (i.e.,perceived social purposes of trying, or not trying, to achieve academically)would be a useful first step in this direction (Urdan & Maehr, 1995).

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


Regarding the examination of achievement goals, this study has demon-strated the utility of including social constructs in research on goals. Bylinking goals with social relationship variables, insight was gained regard-ing the ways in which goals are related to achievement and potentialdifferences in the function of goals among high and low achievers andbetween boys and girls. In addition, the merging of social constructs andachievement goals in this study may provide clues regarding the motiva-tional orientations that influence the types of friends students select. Al-though the correlational nature of the data in this study precludes makingany type of causal inferences, it does provide guidance for future longitudi-nal or experimental research that can address some of these importantcausal questions.

By examining four different types of goals, both independently andcollectively, some insights about the function of these goals was gained.Each of the goals were related to the social constructs and achievementin unique ways, suggesting that a clearer understanding of motivation andachievement can be gained by widening the range of goals beyond thetwo, task and relative ability, that are typically examined (Blumenfeld,1992; Urdan & Maehr, 1995). By examining the relations among the socialconstructs and all four achievement goals simultaneously, information wasgained regarding the effect of pursuing multiple goals. Because achieve-ment goals are often only weakly to moderately correlated, as in this study,it is reasonable to assume that students pursue multiple goals simultane-ously (Ainley, 1993; Meece & Holt, 1993). Future attempts to understandstudent motivation and achievement from a goal theory perspective shouldbenefit from examining students multiple goals. Finally, the complex re-sults involving relative ability goals, including positive relations withGPA, the negative orientation of friends scale, and the positive orientationof friends scale suggest that more work is needed to understand howrelative ability goals function. Recent work by Elliott and his colleaguesexamining the approach and avoidance components of relative ability goalsprovide an interesting new direction to pursue through which we can de-velop a clearer picture of how relative ability goals affect motivation andperformance.

The ethnical and cultural homogeneity of the sample used in this studywas a limitation. The gender differences found in this study suggest that goalsmay not operate uniformly for all students. If the gender differences foundin this study were created by differences in the way boys and girls think ofthemselves in relation to others and in how they define achievement, weshould expect similar differences to emerge among students of various cul-tures and, perhaps, developmental levels (Maehr, 1974; Maehr & Nicholls,1980; Midgley et al., 1995; Triandis et al., 1985). Future research with morediverse samples is greatly needed.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


REFERENCESAinley, M. D. (1993). Styles of engagement with learning: Multidimensional assessment of their

relationship with strategy use and school achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology,85, 395–405.

Ames, C. A. (1984). Competitive, cooperative, and individualistic goal structures: A motivationalanalysis. In R. E. Ames & C. Ames, (Eds.), Research on motivation in education. (Vol. 1,pp. 177–207). New York: Academic Press.

Ames, C. A. (1990, April). The relationship of achievement goals to student motivation inclassroom settings. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational ResearchAssociation, Boston.

Ames, C. A. (1992). Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educa-tional Psychology, 84, 261–271.

Ames, C., & Archer, J. (1988). Achievement goals in the classroom: Students’ learning strategiesand motivation processes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 260–267.

Anderman, E. A., & Maehr, M. L. (1994). Motivation and schooling in the middle grades. Reviewof Educational Research, 64, 287–310.

Atkinson, J. W., & O’Connor, P. (1966). Neglected factors in studies of achievement-orientedperformance: Social approval as an incentive and performance decrement. In J. W. Atkinsonand N. T. Feather (Eds.), A theory of achievement motivation. New York: Wiley.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall.

Berndt, T. J. (1979). Developmental changes in conformity to peers and parents. DevelopmentalPsychology, 15, 608–616.

Berndt, T. J., & Keefe, K. (1992). Friends’ influence on adolescents’ perceptions of themselvesat school. In D. Schunk and J. Meece (Eds.), Student perceptions in the classroom (pp. 51–73). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Blumenfeld, P. C. (1992). Classroom learning and motivation: Clarifying and expanding goaltheory. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 272–281.

Brown, B. B. (1989). The role of peer groups in adolescents’ adjustment to secondary school.In D. Belle (Ed.), Children’s social networks and social supports (pp. 188–215). New York:Wiley.

Cameron, J., & Pierce, W. D. (1994). Reinforcement, reward, and intrinsic motivation: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 64, 363–423.

Coleman, J. (1961). The adolescent society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (1985).Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Dweck, C. S. (1992). The study of goals in human behavior. Psychological Science, 3, 165–167.

Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality.Psychological Review, 95, 256–273.

Eccles, J. S., & Midgley, C. (1989). Stage/environment fit: Developmentally appropriate class-rooms for early adolescents. In R. E. Ames & C. Ames (Eds.), Research on motivation ineducation (Vol. 3, pp. 139–186). NY: Academic Press.

Eder, D. (1985). The cycle of popularity: Interpersonal relations among female adolescents.Sociology of Education, 58, 154–165.

Elliott, E. S., & Dweck, C. S. (1988). Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement. Journalof Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 5–12.

Elliot, A., & Harackiewicz, J. (1996). Approach and avoidance achievement goals and intrinsicmotivation: A mediational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 461–475.

Epstein, J. L. (1983). Friends in school: Patterns of selection and influence in secondary schools.New York: Academic Press.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


Epstein, J. L. (1989). The selection of friends. In D. Belle (Ed.), Children’s social networks andsocial supports (pp. 158–187). New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Fordham, S., & Ogbu, J. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the burden of‘‘acting white.’’ Urban Review, 18, 176–206.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Graham, S., & Golan, S. (1991). Motivational influences on cognition: Task involvement, egoinvolvement, and depth of information processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83,187–194.

Harter, S. (1975). Mastery motivation and need for approval in older children and their relation-ship to social desirability response tendencies. Developmental Psychology, 11, 186–196.

Harter, S. (1981). A new self-report scale of intrinsic versus extrinsic orientation in the classroom:Motivational and informational components. Developmental Psychology, 17, 300–312.

Horner, M. S. (1972). Toward an understanding of achievement-related conflicts in women.Journal of Social Issues, 28, 157–175.

Jaccard, J., Turrisi, R., & Wan, C. K. (1990). Interaction effects in multiple regression. NewburyPark, CA: Sage.

Jussim, L. (1991). Grades may reflect more than performance: Comment on Wentzel (1989).Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 153–155.

Juvonen, J., & Murdock, T. (1993). How to promote social approval: Effects of audience andachievement outcome on publicly communicated attributions. Journal of Educational Psy-chology, 85, 365–376.

Juvonen, J., & Weiner, B. (1993). An attributional analysis of students’ interactions: The socialconsequences of perceived responsibility. Educational Psychology Review, 5, 325–345.

Kinderman, T. A. (1993). Natural peer groups as contexts for individual development: The caseof children’s motivation school. Development Psychology, 29, 970–977.

Landrine, H. (1992). Clinical implications of cultural differences: The referential versus theindexical self. Clinical Psychology Review, 12, 4–1–415.

Locke, E. A., Shaw, K. N., Saari, L. M., & Latham, G. P. (1981). Goals setting and task perfor-mance: 1969–1980. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 125–152.

Lepper, M. R., & Hodell, M. (1989). Intrinsic motivation in the classroom. In C. Ames & R.Ames (Eds.), Research on motivation in education (Vol. 3, pp. 73–105). San Diego: Aca-demic Press.

Maccoby, E., & Jacklin, C. (1974). The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, CA: StanfordUniv. Press.

Maehr, M. L. (1974). Culture and achievement motivation. American Psychologist, 29, 887–896.

Maehr, M. L. (1984). Meaning and motivation: Toward a theory of personal investment. In R. E.Ames & C. Ames (Eds.), Research on motivation in education, (Vol. 1, pp. 115–144). NewYork: Academic Press.

Maehr, M. L., & Anderman, E. (1993). Reinventing schools for early adolescents: Emphasizingtask goals. The Elementary School Journal, 93, 593–610.

Maehr, M. L., & Midgley, C. (1991). Enhancing student motivation: A school-wide approach.Educational Psychologist, 26, 399–427.

Maehr, M. L., & Nicholls, J. G. (1980). Culture and achievement motivation: A second look. InN. Warren (Ed.), Studies in cross-cultural psychology, vol. 2 (pp. 221–267). New York:Academic Press.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion,and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.

Meece, J. L., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Hoyle, R. H. (1988). Students’ goal orientations and cognitiveengagement in classroom activities. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 514–523.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


Meece, J. L., & Holt, K. (1993). A pattern analysis of students’ achievement goals. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 85, 582–590.

Midgley, C. (1993). Motivation and middle level schools. In Advances in motivation and achieve-ment (Vol. 8, pp. 217–274). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Midgley, C., Anderman, E., & Hicks, L. (1995). Differences between elementary and middleschool teachers and students: A goal theory approach. Journal of Early Adolescence, 15,90–113.

Midgley, C., Arunkumar, R., & Urdan, T. (1996). ‘‘If I don’t do well tomorrow, there’s areason:’’ Predictors of adolescents’ use of academic self-handicapping strategies. Journalof Educational Psychology, 88, 423–434.

Midgley, C., Maehr, M. L., & Urdan, T. (1993). Manual for the patterns of adaptive learningsurvey. The University of Michigan Press.

Midgley, C., & Urdan, T. (1995). Predictors of middle school students’ use of self-handicappingstrategies. Journal of Early Adolescence, 15, 389–411.

Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Nicholls, J. G. (1984). Conceptions of ability and achievement motivation. In R. Ames & C.

Ames (Eds.), Research on motivation in education: Vol. 1. Student motivation (pp. 39–73).New York: Academic Press.

Nicholls, J. G. (1989). The competitive ethos and democratic education. Cambridge: HarvardUniv. Press.

Nicholls, J. G., Cobb, P., Wood, T., Yackel, E., & Patashnick, M. (1990). Assessing students’theories of success in mathematics: Individual and classroom differences. Journal for Re-search in Mathematics Education, 21, 109–122.

Nicholls, Patashnick, & Nolen, (1985). Adolescents’ theories of education. Journal of EducationalPsychology, 77, 683–692.

Nolen, S. B. (1988). Reasons for studying: Motivational orientations and study strategies. Cogni-tion and Instruction, 5, 269–287.

Parker, J. G., & Gottman, J. M. (1989). Social and emotional development in a relational context.In T. J. Berndt & G. W. Ladd (Eds.), Peer relationships in childhood (pp. 95–131). NewYork: Wiley.

Parsons, J. E., & Goff, S. B. (1980). Achievement motivation and values: An alternative perspec-tive. In L. J. Fyans (Ed.), Achievement motivation (pp. 349–373). New York: Plenum Press.

Phelan, P., Davidson, A. L., & Cao, H. T. (1991). Students’ multiple worlds: Negotiating theboundaries of family, peer, and school cultures. Anthropology and Education quarterly, 22,224–250.

Pintrich, P. R. (1989). The dynamic interplay of motivation and cognition in the college class-room. In M. L. Maehr & C. Ames (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement: Motiva-tion enhancing environments, Vol. 6 (pp. 117–160). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Pintrinch, P. R., & Garcia, T. (1991). Student goal orientation and self-regulation in the collegeclassroom. In M. L. Maehr & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement:Goals and self-regulatory processes (Vol. 7, pp. 371–402). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Roeser, R. W., Midgley, C., & Urdan, T. (1996). Perceptions of the school psychological environ-ment and early adolescents’ self appraisals and academic engagement: The mediating roleof goals and belonging. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 408–422.

Schneider, F. W., & Green, J. E. (1977). Need for affiliation and sex as moderators of therelationship between need for achievement and academic performance. Journal of SchoolPsychology, 15, 269–277.

SPSS Inc. (1988). SPSS-X User’s guide, 3rd edition.Steinberg, L., & Silverberg, S. B. (1986). The vicissitudes of autonomy in early adolescence.

Child Development, 57, 841–851.Thorne, B. (1986). Girls and boys together . . . but mostly apart: Gender arrangements in

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP


elementary schools. In W. W. Hartup & Z. Rubin (Eds.), Relationships and development(pp. 167–184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Triandis, H. C., Leung, K., Villareal, M. J., & Clack, F. L. (1985). Allocentric versus idiocentrictendencies: Convergent and discriminant validation. Journal of Research in Personality, 19,395–415.

Urdan, T. C. (1996, April). Examining students’ multiple goals profiles. Paper presented at themeetings of the American Educational Research Association, New York.

Urdan, T. C., & Hicks, L. (1995, April). What adolescent students say about the interface ofpeer relationships and motivation in school. Paper presented at the meeting of the AmericanEducational Research Association, San Francisco.

Urdan, T. C., & Maehr, M. L. (1995). Beyond a two goal theory of motivation: A case for socialgoals. Review of Educational Research, 65, 213–243.

Wheelock, A., & Dorman, G. (1988). Before it’s too late: Dropout prevention in the middlegrades. Carrboro, NC: Center for Early Adolescence and the Massachusetts AdvocacyCenter.

ab05$$0930 03-18-97 22:08:21 cepa AP: CEP

examining the relations among early adolescent students’ goals and friends’ orientation toward...

Documents