Comparing achievement goal profiles among students from various cultural backgrounds

Based on Personal Investment Theory, this study investigates whether individuals from five cultural groups shared similar goal profiles and whether these profiles led to similar outcomes across cultural groups. Latent profile analyses were first used to extract profiles from a 3-year longitudinal sample of high school students including Non-Indigenous Australians, Indigenous Australians, Indigenous American, Middle Easterners, and Asians (N =2,643). Then, the latent profile solutions and the predictive associations between the profiles and the outcomes were compared across groups. Five profiles were identified, showing similar structure but different relative proportions across cultural groups: Mastery-Caring, Performance-Extrinsic, Fully Motivated, Unmotivated, and Moderately Unmotivated. In regard to students’ learning processes and future expectations, results revealed the advantage of simultaneously endorsing multiple goals, relative to a more limited set of goals, and the risk of solely focusing on performance and extrinsic rewards.