In her study, test-taking motivation showed no significant effect on test performance when considered with domain-specific aspects of motivation.
Test-taking motivation is assigned to the latter motivational constructs, because taking a test is a specific situation for students.
However, Wise and DeMars cautioned that the relationship between test performance and test-taking motivation could have been distorted by academic ability as a mediator variable.
In the following subsections, we describe studies that have detected associations between test-taking motivation, performance, and test stakes, and those that have not.
Our study furthermore found that performance in low-stakes tests was slightly influenced by different motivational aspects of test-taking motivation.
Other studies that have found a strong relationship between test-taking motivation and performance include those by Thelk et al. ([2009]) and Wise and DeMars ([2005]).
Currently, motivational research indicates that a lack of test-taking motivation can decrease students' performance in low-stakes assessments.
Later on, the model was also used to model differences in test-taking motivation in low-stakes tests in order to separate motivated from unmotivated test-taking behavior (e.g., Mittelhaëuser et al. 2015).
Eklöf assumed that test-taking motivation had no effect because most of these Swedish Grade 8 students, having not previously experienced receiving grades or taken external tests, did not perceive the test as a low-stakes one.
In many studies, test-taking motivation is mainly operationalized through questions about students' invested effort, which covers the main element of the test-taking motivation definition.
We also intend to compare reported test-taking motivation before a test with the test-taking motivation after it using the same motivational subscales.
