Investigating the Psychometric Characteristics of the Writing Motivation Questionnaire among Iranian Students

Writing motivation relies on students' written output. The aim of this study was to validate the writing motivation questionnaire (SWAS) among first grade high school students. The method of this research is descriptive and of experimental type and its approach is applied. The study population was all first-grade high school students in Yazd in the academic year 2009-2010. The research sample consisted of 460 junior high school students who were selected by multi-stage cluster random sampling. The research instrument was the writing motivation questionnaire (SWAS) by Wright, Hodgson and McTighe (2019). Mean, standard deviation and conventional testing methods (validity determination, factor analysis and reliability) were used to analyze the data. The findings of this study show that the writing motivation questionnaire has 5 components as well as a total score of 30 items; it also has good validity, reliability, and fitness in terms of psychometrics. The confirmatory factor structure also confirmed the proposed five-factor model of the questionnaire. In other words, the writing motivation questionnaire has the necessary validity to measure the writing motivation of adolescents in junior high school. In addition, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the subscales of this test is 0.650 to 0.863, which indicates its good reliability. Therefore, it seems that the mentioned questionnaire, due to the strength of the factor structure and appropriate psychometric properties, can be used by other researchers to evaluate teaching, therefore its use is recommended.