The examination of the relationships among middle school students' epistemological beliefs, goal orientations, and achievement emotions: a structural equation modeling study
BMC Psychology, cilt.14, sa.1, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 14 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1186/s40359-026-04488-4
- Dergi Adı: BMC Psychology
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Psycinfo, Directory of Open Access Journals, Health Research Premium Collection (ProQuest)
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Achievement emotions, Epistemological belief, Goal orientations, Middle school students
- Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This study examined the relationships among middle school students' epistemological beliefs, achievement emotions, and goal orientations, and it was conducted with the participation of 1073 middle school students from seven different public schools in Turkey. A correlative research design was employed, and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted. According to the results, sophisticated epistemological beliefs were positively related to mastery and performance goal orientations. In the relationship between epistemological beliefs and achievement emotions, it was observed that sophisticated epistemological beliefs in the dimensions of justification and source positively related to positive achievement emotions and negatively related to negative achievement emotions. On the other hand, it has been observed that sophisticated epistemological beliefs in the certainty dimension are negatively related to positive achievement emotions and positively related to negative achievement emotions. An analysis of the relationships between goal orientations and achievement emotions found no significant relationship between performance-approach goals and positive–negative achievement emotions, whereas there was a significant relationship between all other subdimensions. However, the study discussed inconsistent results for some subdimensions of epistemological beliefs and goal orientations. Further research is needed to examine the relationship between epistemological beliefs and achievement emotions in middle school students. This study is innovative in that it simultaneously tests the structural relationships between epistemological beliefs, goal orientations, and feelings of success in the context of science education using a large-scale sample. It addresses a gap in the literature by exploring how these constructs relate to each other within the same empirical framework.