Development and validation of the reading motivation questionnaire in an English as a foreign language context

This paper presents the development and validation of the reading motivation questionnaire in an English as a foreign language context (RMQ-EFL) with Chinese secondary students. Data were collected from a sample of 293 secondary students in grades 10-11. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in determination of five factors (i.e., reading efficacy, reading enjoyment, recognition, involvement, and compliance) with a strong psychometric basis. The significant correlations between these five RMQ-EFL factors and students' learning strategies in reading and between the five RMQ-EFL factors and students' English learning achievements further confirmed the concurrent and predictive validity of the RMQ-EFL. In addition, this study found that there were no significant differences in students' EFL reading motivation across gender and grade levels. The RMQ-EFL can be used both as an evaluation tool for teachers to assess students' EFL reading motivation, and as a research tool for researchers to explore the relationships between students' English reading motivation and their English reading behavior and performance or to assess the effectiveness of targeted reading motivation interventions.