Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

Relationships between Family Values, Academic Motivation and Performance

Although everyone has different outlooks on what motivates them, scholars have found that when it comes to students and motivation, they are related. The primary goal of this study was to examine the ways in which motivation, family values, and performance has a positive significance on academic performance. College students, primarily from Winthrop University, were surveyed to see the ways in which their experiences from home and school life influenced their academic performance. The constructs that were measured were (a) family values, (b) reading comprehension, and (c) motivation (intrinsic/extrinsic). Overall, it was found that reading comprehension held no significance in determining a student’s academic performance, nor was there a significance in a student’s academic motivation. It was also found that a student’s family values held to be statistically significant on the construct levels of general attitudes and curiosity, making our main hypothesis to be partially supported. From the results, it can be concluded that academic performance is measured by things other than just the student, but that they are influenced by external factors as well. The things that were assumed to be related were not significant, which was unexpected since it was hypothesized that there was a positive significance between all variables and academic performance. These findings may suggest that the more a person is curious about his or her work, and the more positive the guardian’s general attitudes, the better the child is likely to perform.