Abstract:

This study focuses on attribution and motivation among Indonesian university students. Previous studies have found that one’s attribution can be influenced by one’s cultural background, and also that there are differences in motivation among ethnicities, this research attempts to explore the possible connections among attribution, motivation, and cultural factors (ethnicity, religiosity, gender) among Indonesian university students. For this discussion, the results of one private and one public university out of five participating universities were used. In total of 443 students (155 male and 287 female) from the two universities participated. Using private and public universities were considered to be fit for this research, as the race issue also permeates the educational setting with mostly Native Indonesians study at public universities and mostly Chinese Indonesians study at private universities. Three dimensions of attribution: locus of control, stability, and controllability, were used to measure students’ attribution. To be noted that the controllability dimension was differentiated between the personal control and external control. This research used achievement goals motivation: learning goals, performance-approach and avoidance goals, also work-avoidant motivation and learned helplessness for to measure students’ motivation. Students’ beliefs of their intelligence and their self-efficacy were also measured as these two additional variables were considered to be related to students’ attribution. The preliminary results of this research show some interesting findings of the relations between students’ attribution and motivation, some supported this research hypotheses and some seemed to give another way of seeing the relations between the variables. Students with internal, stable and controllable attributions were found to adopt learning goals but not performance approach goals, and to have high self-efficacy. Students with external, unstable, and uncontrollable (external) attributions were found to be linked with performance-avoidance goals and learned helplessness. Internal, unstable, and externally controlled attributions were related to work-avoidance motivation. It was also found that high religiosity was linked with external, stable, and controllable (personal) attributions. This research found that there were not any difference between male and female participants regarding their locus of control, stability, personal and external control attributions. There was also not found any difference between male and female regarding their religiosity.

Keywords:

attribution, motivation, achievement goals.