Adolescents Motivation Toward the Environment - Assignment Example

SummarySchools have been adopting various measures to inculcate the spirit of protecting environment in the young minds. To assess the level of autonomous motivation of adolescents in the positive environment behavior the self determination theory (SDT) is used. The SDT uses motivations as a tool, which is Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Motivation. In Extrinsic Motivation there are further three types like external interjected and identified regulation. STD says that motivation is autonomous in people with more choices available to them than pressure acting upon them.

Adolescents face lesser control in environment behaviors than academic behaviors. The present study postulates three hypotheses: first, increased environmental motivation clubbed with frequent environmental attitudes, second, it is greater in environment than academic, third, it is more in older than younger students. All these studies were tested considering gender; however the study has not examined gender differences in older students’ motivation toward the environment. Keywords: motivation toward the environment, trends and correlatesReviewReview of Research paper adolescent motivation toward the environmental -Age related Trends and correlation In this research, a total of 200 students split into 5 age groups were chosen for the study.

Out of these 200 a section of 74 have already participated in a similar study a year ago. The study found that adolescents reported a higher autonomy in their environmental than academic behaviors and autonomous environmental motivation was higher in older than younger students. The study has certain limitations as all the samples were from a suburban, French speaking middle class white student. The sample was in very small scale to be precisely it is only of 126 students. The findings say that the youth have better environmental behavior but increasing alienation from school.

The research paper clearly states that there is a need to study whether, the adolescents are motivated to adopt environmental behaviors and says that self-determination theory (SDT) put forward the fact that people engaged in environmental related behaviors have developed autonomous motivation towards those behaviors. The present study poses three hypotheses like increased environmental motivation correlates with frequent environmental behaviors, it is greater in environmental than education and autonomous environmental is higher in adolescents than younger students.

Though these hypotheses were tested considering the gender, no study was conducted on gender differences in adolescents motivation through the environment. Earlier researches in this field have been mentioned, but not included in the study The Research Methodology relating to the study is appropriate to the goals and the choice of the study is appropriate to the goals and the choice of the study is also relevant to the problems. But given the nature of the study the sample taken is very small and participants are only from select group of French speaking, suburban middle class white students which does not truly represent a diverse group.

Out of the 200 students selected a group of 74 students had already participated in a similar study a year back. Their opinion could influence the outcome in a particular way, hence the sample does not make sense. In the sample, the questionnaire was given to the students and it was filled with the help of trained observers who were available to answer any questions raised by the students. It was an open-minded questionnaire and no statistics from government report was used. No evidence of reliability was presented in the study.

Though the logic of the sample procedure is correct, source of bias towards the sample were not completely eliminated. The answers obtained in the questionnaire were clearly mentioned in the descriptive statistics like means, standard deviations and inter correlations between measure and Repeated -measures Analysis of Variance and Polynomial contrasts were also given. The conclusions based on results are clearly and correctly interpreted. However, it suffers from limitations of very small group and limited to a group of middle class students affiliated to a particular language.

Limitations have been mentioned in the study with a promise of future study involving more diverse population and correct representative nature.