The study presented in this article explores prisoners’ academic motivation structure from the theoretical perspective of self-determination theory, using the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS). Analysing survey responses from 529 (29 female, 500 male) prisoners with Norwegian citizenship who participated in education while being incarcerated, the authors investigate how prison students’ motivation might be “reduced” or summarised using a smaller set of factors or components than extant studies. A confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a five-factor model, including intrinsic motivation, three types of extrinsic motivation (namely identified regulation, introjected regulation, and external regulation) and amotivation, yielded the best fit with the data provided by the prisoners. An alternative three-factor model created by collapsing the three extrinsic dimensions into a single dimension was found to fit the data poorly. The structural model revealed that younger prisoners displayed more controlled academic motivations than older ones, who displayed more autonomous motivations. Contrary to the authors’ expectations, prisoners with a higher level of education did not display more autonomous academic motivations than those with a lower level.

中文翻译：

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从自决理论的角度看囚犯的学术动机：来自挪威囚犯群体的证据

本文提出的研究使用学术动机量表 (AMS) 从自决理论的理论角度探讨了囚犯的学业动机结构。作者分析了 529 名（29 名女性，500 名男性）在被监禁期间参加教育的挪威公民的调查答复，作者使用比现有研究更小的一组因素或成分调查了如何“减少”或总结监狱学生的动机. 验证性因素分析表明，包括内在动机、三种外在动机（即识别调节、内射调节和外部调节）和动机的五因素模型与囚犯提供的数据最吻合。发现通过将三个外部维度合并为一个维度创建的替代三因素模型对数据的拟合效果不佳。结构模型显示，与表现出更多自主动机的年长囚犯相比，年轻囚犯表现出更多受控制的学术动机。与作者的预期相反，受教育程度较高的囚犯并没有表现出比受教育程度较低的囚犯更多的自主学习动机。