Krapp (2005)

Krapp, A. (2005). Basic needs and the development of interest and intrinsic motivational orientations. Learning and Instruction, 15 (5), 381-395.

Preface
Andreas Krapp is the originator of the Person-Object Theory of Interest (POI), an alternate theory of motivation in the interest family. I thought that we could expand our understanding of interest motivation by taking this exploratory side trip into POI. POI focuses on the 3 basic needs of Self-Determination theory, which provides a fresh insight into the person- object-of-interest relationship. This article by A. Krapp is a fortuitous choice because it provides a very condensed (1-page) outline of POI, and another 1 page summary of the role that self-regulation plays in POI.

Introduction
Krapp assumes that emotional experiences play a significant role in the development, and subsequent stabilization (if any), of individual interest in objects of learning. He, like Weiner in his Attribution Theory, seems to ignore, or not dwell upon, the initial sparkle of interest (phase 1 to Hidi and Renninger). Krapp relates the motivational drivers to the three basic psychological-well-being needs of Self-Determination theory: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. He concludes the article with a brief description of an experiment in vocational education that attempts to demonstrate that interest development can be related to these three basic needs.

Development of interest and interest-based motivational orientations (POI)
Interest is a property of the person-object relationship, and is domain specific. The domain specificity can range from very discrete to broad, but always has a unifying theme. Interest is characterized by a cognitive aspect (personal knowledge value) and an emotional aspect (associated affect).

Interest begins with the process of establishing a person-object relationship, and may eventually develop into a stabilized interest of persistent personal value. Krapp admits that the initial prompts, and selections between similar experiences, are not well understood.

Dual regulation system
Krapp postulates a dual regulation system that is needed to fully explain the formulation of goals and the selection processes that follow. One system is the cognitive, deliberate, regulation system that controls goal setting and other cognitive processes. The other system is emotional, which processes the feelings and experiences associated with the three basic needs that arise during the activity, makes evaluations, and influences subsequent actions. Krapp postulates also that the systems work primarily in a conscious way, but also operate subconsciously, which makes empirical measurements difficult. Dual regulation systems go back as far as Dewey in the early 1900’s and are part of other recent theories (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi, Boekaert).

Basic needs
Krapp’s basic needs are the same as those fundamental to self-determination theory. His research first establishes that experiences related to basic needs are influential in interest development.
Empirical approaches and selected results

To ascertain the relation to basic needs, Krapp observes that reflective reporting is effective. People tend to relate causes for actions to basic needs when they are interviewed after the fact. Krapp uses three methods to elicit basic needs related data: a) questionnaires, b) experience sampling methods, and c) retrospective interviews.

Questionnaires
Krapp has conducted a longitudinal study of motivation orientation over 2.5 years with a group of 117 trainees in the insurance business. The group’s mean age was 18.5 years, and was 50% female. The training sessions were 6 weeks long, twice a year, and were conducted at Krapp’s institution. On 6 occasions, the trainees answered a questionnaire about their learning motivations, from which they were assessed on 2 scales: Intrinsic Motivational Orientation (IMO), and Extrinsic Motivational Orientation (EMO). The trajectories of these two scales were the important products. Reliabilities of these scales were reported as between .76 and .94. Questionnaires were also used to assess competence on 3 occasions over the same period, both at the training facility and in the workplace, with a reliability rating of .83. Autonomy was likewise measured on scales with a rating of .93. Relatedness was measured on the 2 subscales of “social climate” ( social relations in the working group) and “integration in the culture of experts” (participation in authentic tasks in the work place and degree of acceptance). Reliability ratings were .83 and .86, respectively.

Hierarchal Linear Modeling of the questionnaire data, where the motivational orientation trajectories were the dependent variables, was conducted independently by K. Wild in 2000. The 2 growth curves are correlated (r = .34). All need-related indicators were predictors of IMO (p<.01), as expected. Only competence and social climate were related to EMO (p< .05). Including the control variables of gender and intelligence did not alter the results significantly.

Experience Sampling Methods (ESM)
ESM is a methodology of probing for instantaneous data at selected times during the experiment. Krapp used a programmable calculator to signal each student at random intervals. At the signal, the student would stop his activity and answer queries related to his need-related states at the moment. This technique was used 3 times during the first 2 years of the study, including once during a training session in the work place.

The accumulated data was analyzed by hierarchal linear modeling techniques, with the three basic needs as the independent variables, and with the IMO and EMO trajectories as the dependent variables. In this case, only competence and autonomy were significant predictors of the IMO motivation trajectory (p< .01). Only autonomy in the school was a predictor of EMO (p< .05). Krapp observed also that there was a decline in the predictive power of all the needs-related states after the first year. It was not clear if this was an artifact of the experiment design, or a phenomenon of the theory.

Retrospective interviews
Individual retrospective interviews were used to elicit information about conditions that contribute to interest development. In Krapp’s study, two subgroups of trainees from the longitudinal study were interviewed, one group in the middle of the study (n=49), and the second group at the end of the study (n= 71). The purpose of the interviews was to determine if the trainees had developed new interests during the program, and which factors, internal and external, they considered were causes of the new interests and which factors contributed to the maintenance of the interests.

All trainees reported they had acquired new interests. For the most popular new interest, among the offered causes were some related to basic needs. Result from both interview groups were similar. More than 70% reported competence-related causes, about 65% offered relatedness causes, and up to 41% offered autonomy-related causes, for their new interest. Krapp suggests that the percentage differences are not indicative of the relative importance of the three basic needs, but they do inform his general hypothesis that basic needs are related to interest development.

Summary and conclusions
The article was intended to outline Krapp’s theory of POI and to provide supporting empirical data. The included data is not comprehensive, but does support, in large part, the theory, and is consistent with other cited data in the field. Krapp is not satisfied that the relative importance of the basic needs has been established, and suggests that more work is needed to fully understand the models and concepts. He points to “ personality systems interactions” as an emerging field of study that holds much promise.

Evaluation
Inasmuch as this article was never intended as a report of Krapp’s study, it is unfair to criticize it for lack of detailed tabulated data, and for the broad statements of statistical results. It serves its intended purposes well, within the limits of publishing space.

I hold grave reservations about the technique of the ESM methodology, not having a good understanding of the method. It seems to me to be very intrusive to interrupt a learning process unannounced, likely very irritating also. This gives me concerns about the validity of the results.

The experiments with the insurance company trainees in Germany were very limited in scope, which makes generalizability problematic, but the purpose of the study was to investigate the phenomenon, not to broaden the theory. Further research will add breadth.

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