The article, Age-Related Differences in Achievement Goal Differentiation, by Mimi Bong from Korea University, questioned whether achievement goals differ more in elementary aged children or middle school students. The study examined 1,196 Korean elementary and middle school students’ achievement goals based off of four distinct achievement goal factors. By use of self-reports the researchers gathered information from the elementary and middle school students’ perception of their achievement goals. Once the research was compiled it was found that the achievement goals of young students strongly correlated with one another but, the correlation became increasingly weak as the age of the respondents increased. With that being said, the type of data needed to answer this research question is self-identity, since the researcher only gathered data by self-reports from the students, off of how they describe their achievement goals, which is somewhat of a self-description. Therefore, the data gathering method would be by in-depth interview, since it is more than just a shallow opinion, but the interviews themselves took a lot less time than a typical in-depth interview would. The method of data analysis for this research question would be ordinal, since the students ‘ranked’ their achievement goals based off of the four distinct achievement goal factors given to them by the researcher. I found this research methodology to be very interesting, it seemed to be a lot more informal than I am used to reading about. Therefore, that aspect of it made this research example interesting to me since I have been correlating research solely with formal tactics instead of informal. I believe this would be interesting for the class as a whole as well since the research we look at in class is more formal and this shows that research can be done in a plethora of ways.

Bong, Mimi. (2009). Age-Related Differences in Achievement Goal Differentiation. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 101, No. 4, pp. 879-896.