SMQ.

The SMQ-II (Glynn et al., 2011) is a 25-item scale designed to measure the degree to which students’ motivation to learn science is driven by five dimensions: Intrinsic Motivation, or learning for its own sake (e.g., “I am curious about discoveries of STEM”), Career Motivation (e.g., “Understanding STEM will benefit me in my career”), Self-Determination, or a sense of responsibility for their own learning (e.g., “I put enough effort into learning STEM”), Self-Efficacy, or confidence in learning science (e.g. “I believe I can master STEM knowledge and skills”), and Grade-Based Motivation (e.g., “I like to do better than other students on STEM tests”).⁵ Students indicated how much each statement applied to them on a five-point Likert scale from 0 (never) to 4 (always). Each subscale contains five items total and has a possible score of 0–20. A higher score on each subscale indicates a greater motivation from that source (i.e., scoring higher on the Intrinsic Motivation subscale indicates greater motivation to learn science for its own sake). All five subscales had good internal consistency in our sample (pre data: Cronbach’s alpha for Intrinsic Motivation = 0.792, Career Motivation = 0.788, Self-Determination = 0.805, Self-Efficacy = 0.866, Grade-Based Motivation = 0.831; post data Cronbach’s alpha for Intrinsic Motivation = 0.858, Career Motivation = 0.868, Self-Determination = 0.865, Self-Efficacy = 0.903, Grade-Based Motivation = 0.860). The five-factor model fit relatively well to our pre data set (CFI = 0.905, TLI = 0.892, RMSEA = 0.062) and our post data set (CFI = 0.900, TLI = 0.887, RMSEA = 0.077). The fit of the five-factor model to our data was similar to Glynn et al. (2011; i.e., Glynn’s CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.07).