ABSTRACT
The first situational (state) motivation scale to be used in the communication literature was devised by Beatty and Payne. They defined state motivation as a temporary condition in which individuals direct high levels of concentration and attention toward the competent completion of a task. The original version of the Student Motivation Scale was a simple single-item semantic differential scale and was later expanded to include three or four bipolar adjectives. Available research indicates that the various combinations of items used to measure motivation demonstrate acceptable to excellent reliability. Considerable evidence for the construct validity of these scales has been published. Beatty et al. found that subjects promised extra credit proportional to their comprehension of audiotaped material reported significantly higher scores on a “motivated-unmotivated” bipolar-adjective scale than did subjects who were not offered the incentive.
