Affect and motivation within and between school subjects: Development and validation of an integrative structural model of academic self-concept, interest, and anxiety

A comprehensive model of affect and motivation is necessary for disentangling the variance of subject specific measures into components that are (a) construct specific and generalize across different subjects, (b) subject specific and common to different constructs, and (c) specific to a particular construct in a par ticular subject. In the present study, we developed and investigated an integrative model that yields new insights concerning the generality and school subject specificity of affective motivational constructs. To this end, we first examined structural models that could account for the hierarchical and subject specific nature of academic self concept, anxiety, and interest, respectively. In a second step, we combined these construct specific models to investigate an integrative model that was able to simultaneously address between and within subject relations. We used data from four large scale samples of ninth graders (N 866 6146) on academic self concept, interest, and anxiety in three subjects (mathematics, French, and German). Our results underscored the importance of the components at the more global level: The major part of reliable individual differences in subject specific measures of affective motivational con structs and their relations to achievement indicators (grades and standardized test scores) was explained by the general components of the affective motivational constructs and the global affective motivational appraisals of specific subjects rather than by the construct and subject specific components. Overall, the structural architecture of the integrative model provides a way to simultaneously analyze complex within and between subject relations of affective motivational constructs.