Development of the Academic Writing Motivation Questionnaire

College students motivation to write contributes to their success as writers in college courses. To help college composition instructors determine the writing motivation of their students, the Academic Writing Motivation Questionnaire (AWMQ) was developed. The AWMQ is a 37-item Likert-type questionnaire that takes into account various aspects of writing motivation. The AWMQ was administered to 69 undergraduate students enrolled in undergraduate English courses at The University of Georgia. The students amount of reading, academic major, and gender were examined in relation to the AWMQ. The students who read more were found to have significantly higher scores on the AWMQ than students who read less. Humanities majors had higher scores than majors in other areas. Males and females did not differ significantly in their AWMQ scores. The findings implied that the AWMQ is an efficient and reliable questionnaire, with good content validity, that can assess the writing motivation of students in writing composition courses.