Development of an Implicit Association Test IAT Type (IAT-T) measure of the 2 x 2 Achievement Goal Model

Researchers typically assess achievement goals with self-report measures. Here wepresent the development of a novel alternative using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a reaction time based computerised sorting task. We adapted standard scoring algorithms to obtain four IAT – Type (IAT-T) goal scores. Ninety-nine undergraduate students participated in this study. The IAT-T demonstrated good internal consistency (goal alphas ! .85). We found moderate to large negative correlations between IAT-T goals sharing a dimension and no relationship between goals not sharing one. This pattern differs from that of self-reported goals, yet both are theoretically plausible. As with similar implicit measures, the IAT-T did not correlate with self-report outcomes, though its predictive utility for behavioural and performance outcomes remains to be investigated.