The regulation of students’ studies and the motivations which propel students to study are widely acknowledged as being tightly intertwined (e.g. Pintrich, 1989; Pintrich, 2004; Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990; Pintrich & Zusho, 2002; Pintrich, Zusho, Schiefele, & Pekrun, 2001). The nature and ordering of this relationship is, however, poorly understood. Furthermore, our understanding of this interplay between motivaiton and strategy is almost entirely based on research with students attending Western instutions. The current study aimed to begin to address these issues

In the current study a longitudinal sample is employed to test and then compare two reciprocal models of motivation and strategy and then test the model across the first two years of university. This test was carried out with students engaged in their first and second year at Japanese university. This is a critical transition period from compulsory to optional formal education, which is crucial to students' future. This transition was expected to have an important effect on the development of students’ study strategies and motivations for studying. For the current study, motivation was assessed as students’ deficits in three critical aspects of motivation: value, ability and effort. A deficit perspective was employed due to the non-compulsory nature of the educational context understudy. It is reasonable to assume that students will enter university without critical deficits in these motivations. It is, however, also reasonable to assume that such deficits might arise as students work through their first and then second year at university.  

For the current study, a tripartite model of regulation was employed (Vermunt, 1994, 1998). This model of regulation includes a full continuum of students’ regulation for studying in their individual departments at university: self-regulation, external regulation and lack of regulation.

To assess students’ critical deficits in motivation, the Academic Amotivation Inventory (AAI; Legault, Green-Demers, & Pelletier, 2006) was employed to measure students’ amotivation for studying in their individual department. Based on prior research with the AAI (Fryer, Bovee, & Nakao, 2014) the current study employed three of the four dimensions included in the AAI: Task-valuation, Effort beliefs, and Ability beliefs. 

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