A Study of Motivation, Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Feelings as Psychological Factors Among Iranian Non-English PhD Students in EPT

As noted by Shohamy (۱۹۸۲), affective considerations in language testing have occupied an outstanding place in education. Despite the importance of this issue, it appears that the test-takers' perceptions regarding motivation, self-efficacy beliefs and feelings in addition to their possible relationships have not been investigated in much detail. To narrow the gap, the primary aims of this paper were to explore Iranian non-English PhD students’ perceptions about motivation, self-efficacy beliefs and feelings. This paper also sought to investigate the association between motivation and self-efficacy beliefs, motivation and feelings, as well as self-efficacy beliefs and feelings. To collect the data, an attitudinal researcher-made questionnaire constructed and validated (in Persian) with ۱۵ items from ۱-۵ (strongly disagree to strongly agree). To ensure reliability, pilot study was conducted on ۶۰ participants; subsequently, the questionnaire was distributed among ۲۵۲ participants throughout Iran by online administration. The results of descriptive statistics using SPSS displayed that participants were intrinsically motivated to be prepared for this English Proficiency Test (EPT). Furthermore, they showed the low level of self-efficacy beliefs towards their achievement in the test with high level of amotivation. Lastly, spearman results confirmed that all of these psychological factors were significantly correlated.