Limitations and research perspectives
This study focused on motivational profiles and gender differences in STEM programs in general, but abstraction was made of the differences existing between various programs of study in STEM with varying percentages of female students. For example in Bioscience Engineering, female students comprise 44% of the student population, whereas in Engineering Science only 14% of the students are female. It can be expected that also these different contexts influence the motivational profiles and further research should take this into account.
The prime interest of this study was to explore the relationship between various motivational profiles and academic achievement, controlling for important explanatory variables, such as gender, prior achievement and prior study track [7]. In this study we were not able to control for other background characteristics that are known to have a smaller effect on academic achievement in college [7], such as socio-economic status, parents' level of education or being first generation college attendees.
Motivation and academic self-concept were measured only once, at the beginning of the academic year. During the first semester, adjustments of motivation and academic self-concept levels could occur, which might result in shifts in cluster assignment. The cross sectional nature of our study did not allow to infer a causal link between particular motivational profiles and academic achievement but it is important to investigate this further. Especially longitudinal research designs may provide further insight into the stability or variability of motivational profiles during the first year and the association with drop-out, long-term academic achievement, and retention.
Also, including amotivation as motivational variable could possibly shed further light on the presence of different motivational profiles in STEM education. It might also be an important variable regarding the further identification of motivational profiles which can be called to be more ‘at risk’, since amotivation has been found associated with more negative learning outcomes in first-year higher education [54].