Connecting to the future: a revised measure of exogenous perceptions of instrumentality

The primary objective of this study was to revise a measure of exogenous instrumentality, part of a larger scale known as the Perceptions of Instrumentality Scale (Husman, Derryberry, Crowson, & Lomax, 2004) used to measure future oriented student value for course content. Study 1 piloted the revised items, explored the factor structure, and provided initial evidence for the reliability and validity of the revised scale. Study 2 provided additional reliability evidence but a factor analysis with the original and revised scale items revealed that the revised scale was measuring a distinct and separate construct that was not exogenous instrumentality. Here this new construct is called extrinsic instrumentality for grade. This study revealed that those that endorse a high utility value for grade report lower levels of connectedness (Husman & Shell, 2008) and significantly less use of knowledge building strategies (Shell, et al., 2005). These findings suggest that there are additional types of future oriented extrinsic motivation that should be considered when constructing interventions for students, specifically non-major students. This study also provided additional evidence that there are types of extrinsic motivation that are adaptive and have positive relationships with knowledge building strategies and connectedness to the future. Implications for the measurement of future time perspective (FTP) and its relationship to these three proximal, future oriented, course specific measures of value are also discussed.