Achievement Motivation Assessment Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Yes
- No
- Yes
- No
- Yes
- No
Achievement Motivation Assessment Test - Description and methodology of the test
People considering a self-assessment of achievement motivation may benefit from a result that organizes personal reflection. The Achievement Motivation Assessment Test produces one result that helps readers understand where their drive for accomplishment falls on a low-to-high continuum. It is most informative when responses describe ordinary experience rather than an unusually successful, stressful, or difficult period.
What This Assessment Explores
Items address demanding standards, effort, delay, responsibility, competition, and obstacles. The result reflects a drive to attain high results across different areas of activity rather than guaranteeing success in a particular setting.
The Motivation to Achieve Success scale ranges from 0 to 30: Low (0-10), Average (11-20), or High (21-30). An average level suggests a balance between striving and caution in goal selection; personal characteristics, upbringing, and life experience also influence motivation.
The main item themes can help interpret that single score:
- High standards show how strongly falling short of an ideal affects the respondent.
- Persistence and responsibility indicate commitment to difficult or important tasks.
- Ambition and comparison reflect the value placed on challenge and doing well.
- Work regulation captures restlessness, delay, changing interests, and responses to criticism.
Together, these themes help contextualize whether the result indicates lower, average, or higher achievement motivation.
Methodology and Evidence Base
Each statement in this achievement motivation questionnaire uses a yes-or-no response and asks about work habits, persistence, ambition, decision-making, or reactions to performance. The questionnaire produces one displayed total score, but no item weighting or reverse-scoring procedure is specified, so the numeric calculation cannot be inferred from the range.
The 30-item online questionnaire is conceptually parallel to the Ehlers Motivation for Success Questionnaire described by Ehlers and Merz (1966), but it is not established as a verified adaptation of that instrument. McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell provide the broader achievement-motive framework linking accomplishment with challenging standards. Those published works provide conceptual context, not validation of this online version.
Current mood, self-image, social desirability, and personal interpretations of words such as ambitious or lazy can influence answers. The result is therefore most useful as a practical self-reflection prompt considered alongside lived context.
- Ehlers, Theo, and Ferdinand Merz. (1966). Experiences with a Questionnaire for Assessing Achievement Motivation. Reports from the Institute of Psychology of the Philipps University of Marburg, No. 5. Marburg: Institute of Psychology, Philipps University.
- Kotik, Mikhail Arkadyevich. (1981). Psychology and Safety. Tallinn: Valgus.
- Ehlers, Theo. (1969). The Diagnostic Significance of Sex Differences in Responses to a Questionnaire for Measuring Performance Motivation. Zeitschrift für experimentelle und angewandte Psychologie, 16(4), 519-537. PMID 5371630.
- McClelland, David C., John W. Atkinson, Russell A. Clark, and Edgar L. Lowell. (1953). The Achievement Motive. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. DOI 10.1037/11144-000
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