A longitudinal study of student motivation in high school: Does it really decline?

This study examines the presumed decrease in motivation as students progress across high school by following 3 cohorts for three years crossing critical periods of adolescent development, viz, Grades 7, 8, 9 (N=1331) until they were in grades 9, 10 and 11 respectively. Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) was employed to examine change over time. Three kinds of change were examined; cross sectional change across the three cohorts, longitudinal change within each cohort, and longitudinal change across the three cohorts. Substantively this study is important because it generally confirms findings from a number of studies that motivation does decline over the early years of high school. The most dramatic decline is for the Year 7 cohort.