Evidence for the Latent Factor Structure of the MSLQ

• Main Authors: Jonathan C. Hilpert, Jennifer Stempien, Katrien J. van der Hoeven Kraft, Jenefer Husman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2013-10-01
• Series: SAGE Open
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013510305

The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) has a long history of use in educational psychology, yet few studies have examined the latent factor structure of the entire scale using data from a single administration of the instrument. Although using the subscales individually was encouraged by the creators of the instrument, the practice has produced piecemeal evidence for the latent factor structure. In the current study, we administered all 15 subscales of the MSLQ to a large population of postsecondary students enrolled in introductory geoscience courses and used confirmatory factor analysis to examine the latent factor structures described in previous MSLQ literature. Faced with unsatisfactory evidence for the hypothesized structures, we describe our respecification process and provide some commentary on a more parsimonious latent factor structure that may be of use in similar research projects.