DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT EFFORT ON SCHOOLWORK AND SCHOOL-BASED ACHIEVEMENT

A model of the determinants of student effort and school-based achieve ment (Natriello & McDill, 1986) was replicated, then retested with the addition of an indicator of student perceptions of the difficulty of their classwork. In the original study, English grades as the dependen t variable and data collected in 1964-65 were used. In the current rep lication, similar effect sizes for all variables in the model except g ender, socioeconomic status (SES), and parent standards were found thr ough the use of science grades as the dependent variable and data from 1987-88. The expanded model improved predictive power; the effect for student perceptions was twice as strong as for any of the other terms in the model except ability. Motivation theory that includes students ' perceptions of the tasks they are asked to do was used to explain th e results.