Motivation as a predictor of science academic achievement among secondary school chemistry students’ in Vihiga County, Kenya

Motivation is a multifaceted construct whose application in educational settings has been extensively studied. In learning environments, it has been shown to influence grade achievement, effort expended on a task, task performance and completion, choice of track as well as career choice among others. This paper is part of a doctoral research that used a Mixed methods research design to examine the extent to which science motivation, alongside three other constructs, namely science self-efficacy, scientific literacy and science process skills, can predict science academic achievement among secondary school chemistry students in Vihiga County, Kenya. Multi-stage proportionate stratified sampling was used to select 11 participating schools followed by simple random sampling to select 550 form four students from intact classes to participate in the study. Achievement tests and a motivation scale were used to collect quantitative data while focus group interviews were used to collect qualitative data. The data was analyzed using the Standard Multiple Linear Regression (SMLR) at α = .05. The main finding was that two of the four constructs under study – science motivation and science self-efficacy - individually predicted academic achievement significantly but science motivation was the strongest predictor while science self-efficacy was the least. Science self-efficacy, scientific literacy and science process skills were found to moderate the effects of science motivation on academic achievement.