The Development of the Motivational Style Profile for Children (MSP-C)

The Motivational Style Profile for Children (MSP-C) was designed to measure the dominances, orientations and saliences of motivational states in children. The results of reliability testing and factor analysis followed by parallel analysis of the 50-item, 25-paired, and 15-paired versions for cultural samples suggests the MSP-C may be a viable and reliable instrument for the measurement of motivational characteristics of children between 9 and 15 years of age. Significant cultural differences in motivational characteristics were found, in that Hong Kong children were more telic-, arousal avoiding-, and mastery-dominant compared to the British and French children, suggesting the predominant influence of the Chinese Confucian values. Future research is recommended to test the psychometric properties of the 15-paired version of the measure for different cultural samples.