A study of the relationship between achievement motivation and church participation

This study reports the results of an experiment which was conducted to investigate the relationship between achievement motivation and church participation. Two dfferent protestant church groups were tested. McClelland's Need for Achievement test was employed to measure achievement motivation, and a questionnaire developed y the writer was used to measure church participation. A Bliblical Knowledge Test developed by the writer and the Wonderlic Personnel Test, Form B, were used in the testing situations to provide a motivated condition for the administration of the Need for Achievement Test. The Need for Achievement Tests were scored independently by three raters, graduate students in psychology, who had practiced scoring procedures one semester in a research seminar class. High and low achievement sub-groups were formed on the basis of the Need for Achievement Tests scores. Test scores for both church groups were considered separately. Fisher's t-ration was used to compare the questionnaire scores of the high achievement sub-groups with the questionnaire scores of the low achievement sub-groups. The chi-square test of significance was applied to reveal possible significant differences in the way the high and low achievement sub-groups answered each item on the questionnaire. It was found that those subjects who made high scores on McClelland's Need for Achievement Test demonstrated a general trend toward higher than average scores on the church participation questionnaire.