Testing the mastery-avoidance construct in achievement goal theory: a meta-analytic confirmatory factor analysis (MA-CFA) of two achievement goals scales

Achievement goal theory is a popular theoretical framework that has been widely used to understand the goals students hold regarding their academic work. This theoretical model has been subject to an ongoing debate regarding the number and nature of constructs it includes. Notable in such debates has been the inclusion or exclusion of mastery-avoidance goals. The purpose of this study was to conduct meta-analytic confirmatory factor analyses (MA-CFA) on two popular achievement goal measures, the Achievement Goal Questionnaire-Revised (AGQ-R) and the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) achievement goals scales, to analyse the structure of these scales across published studies. The models were a better fit for the data without mastery-avoidance, and overall the data suggest researchers should consider excluding mastery-avoidance.