چکیده (انگلیسی):

This study explored the validity of the Motivational Systems Theory (MST) as a measure of
performance of college students pursuing business degrees and the level of academic performance
attained across gender and race lines. This goalis achieved by investigating the relationships
between motivational strategies, biological factors, responsive environment factors, skill/prior
ability, and academic performance of these college students and the impact on the level of academic
performance by the college students’ gender and race. The unit of analysis used in this study was
259 college students pursuing business degrees in an institution of higher learning in the southeastern region of the United States. The instrument of choice was the Motivated Strategies for
Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) which was used in prior studies to survey the relationship between
motivation and learning strategies and performance of students in the disciplines of arts and
sciences, philosophy, psychology and natural sciences. The MSLQ will be used to obtain students
responses to 50 questions pertaining to their college experience as relates to their motivation and
application of learning strategies. The results indicated that the motivational systems theory is a
valid predictor of performance. The female students’ levels of academic performance were higher
than their male counterparts irrespective of race.The biological trait, test anxiety, impacted
Caucasian females more than the other gender or race groups. ANOVA confirmed that statistically
significant relationships existed between academic performance and demographic variables gender
and race. MANOVA confirmed that the differencesin performance levels across gender and race
lines were statistically significant. The results strongly supported the premise that the levels of
academic performance are impacted significantly across gender and race lines for college students
pursuing degrees in accredited business programs