Exploring facets of student motivation using a Bass Ackward strategy and the conceptual lens of self-determination theory

•This study examined how a wide range of motives empirically and conceptually relate to each other, leading to the identification of twenty-six distinct motivation facets, providing a comprehensive view of diverse motivational constructs in higher education.•These motivation facets were coherently related to educational outcomes, providing valuable insights for theory and measurement in understanding student motivation.•Multidimensional scaling analyses suggest a differentiated continuum of autonomy within student motivation, consistent with Self-Determination Theory. Motivational constructs have proliferated in educational psychology, reflecting the complexity of what moves people to engage and learn. In this exploratory research, we focused on students’ motivation for higher education. Our goal was to understand how a wide range of motives are empirically and conceptually related. We also examined how this diversity of motivational content relates to the motivational typology postulated by Self-Determination Theory (SDT). In Study 1, we extracted items from a broad collection of measures, formatted them with a common set of instructions, and administered them to multiple samples of current and former U.S. college students. Using Goldberg’s (2006) Bass Ackward factor-analytic method, we distilled twenty-six distinct facets that capture a wide variety of motivational contents. Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) suggested a dimension that resembled SDT’s continuum of relative autonomy, with some facets similar to amotivation and others falling along a range from less to more autonomous or volitional forms of motivation. In Study 2, we administered these provisionally labelled motivational facets alongside SDT’s regulatory styles and a set of external criteria covering multiple outcomes of interest in higher education. MDS analyses replicated the general pattern found in Study 1, recovering a dimension resembling SDT’s continuum of autonomy. Motivational facets were also associated with external criteria in a theoretically coherent manner. We discuss the implications of these exploratory findings for understanding the structure of self-reported motivation and for theory and measurement of student motivation.