Motivational goal orientations of intellectually gifted achieving and underachieving students in the United Arab Emirates

The present study had two phases. In phase 1, students were administered the Emirates version of the TONI and their academic achievement scores were obtained from the school administration. The Emirates version of the TONI was administered individually by trained school psychologists. Based on students' scores on the intelligence test and their academic achievement scores, students were classified in two intellectually gifted groups.

For the purpose of the present investigation, an intellectually gifted student was defined as a student who obtained an intelligence quotient of 130 or greater on the Emirates version of the TONI. An achieving student was defined as a student who ranked in the top 10% in his class for the last 3 years based on academic achievement scores. An underachieving student was defined as one who ranked in the bottom half of his class for the last 3 years based on academic achievement scores. According to these two criteria, there were 98 intellectually gifted achieving students and 46 intellectually gifted underachieving students. None of the gifted underachieving students had an experience of learning disabilities or emotional problems.

In phase 2, the intellectually gifted students were administered the ISM during a regular class period by their teachers who were briefed on the administration procedures. Standardized instructions were read to the students, and they were told that their responses would be confidential and would be used only for research purposes. An informed consent to participate in the study was obtained for all students in both phases.

ANALYSIS

Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) procedure was performed with the two intellectually gifted groups (gifted achieving and gifted underachieving) as the independent variable and the scores on the ISM scales as the dependent variables. The multivariate procedure allowed examination of the effect of the intellectually gifted groups on all the ISM scales simultaneously, taking into consideration the extent to which the scores of the ISM scales intercorrelate. The MANOVA procedure was followed by a univariate ANOVA procedure to determine the effect of the two intellectually gifted groups on each ISM scale. Furthermore, a direct-entry model of discriminant analysis was used to determine which of the ISM scales, as the independent variables, best separated intellectually gifted achieving students from their underachieving peers.

RESULTS

Multivariate analysis of variance procedure was conducted to compare intellectually gifted achieving and underachieving students in terms of their scores on the ISM. A significant multivariate effect on all ISM scales combined was observed (F(9,134) = 5.10, p

The results of the analyses revealed that intellectually gifted achieving students scored significantly higher on Effort, Task, and Competition scales than did intellectually gifted underachieving students. On the other hand, the results showed that intellectually gifted underachieving students scored significantly higher on Feedback and Social Dependency scales than did intellectually gifted achieving students.