Ricerc@Sapienza

Dropout rates in Italy are very high, particularly in freshmen students (Anvur, 2016). University students’ academic achievement has been found to prevent dropout. The present study tested a predicting model of academic achievement in first-year university students based on self-determination theory, through a longitudinal design with two points in time.

Previous research on children’s and adolescents’ happiness either focused on their conceptualisations or the link between self-reported happiness with different outcomes. However, very few studies have connected both approaches to better understand children’s and adolescents’ happiness. To address this gap, we used a mixed-method approach to investigate if the conceptualizations of happiness at school of 744 British children and adolescents could signal differences in autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Self-determination theory (SDT) hypothesizes a multi-factor structure of motivation distinguishing between amotivation, extrinsic motivation (in turn consisting of external regulation, identified regulation, and introjected regulation), and intrinsic motivation. The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the Military Academic Motivation Scale (MAMS), a short and reliable instrument for assessing the aforementioned types of motivation among military cadets. Two representative samples of military cadets completed the MAMS.