学歴社会イメージが学習意欲に与える影響 : 「拡張された経済人モデル」の検討

The purpose of this article is to propose a model that explains school achievement with reference to indicators of motivation and social status, and to evaluate its ability to predict the subjects' later accomplishments as university students. The Homo-economicus model used in previous studies relates motivation for study to measure of the subjects' meritocratic imaging. We will augment this model by also including the social status of the subjects' parents.

Previous studies along these lines have typically used data at the elementary or secondary education level, and not at the university level. It is well-known that individuals' motivation for study is important to their school achievement, but few empirical studies have explored this topic. The data we use for our analysis consists of a survey taken in a lecture for students of social and human science schools, in 2010. The data set is comprised of more than 300 samples and includes answers to 23 questions about students' knowledge, their attitude towards school life, and their parents' academic background.

Correlation coefficient analysis relating motivations for study and imaging of Gakureki-shakai yields the following results. First, the imaging and motivation are strongly correlated, and it is possible that the strength of the image controls the strength of the motivation. Second, it is difficult to say that the motivation has much influence on study time of students. Third, as shown by responses to the survey question "Do you have an objective for study?", there is stronger correlation between motivation and imaging for subjects whose parents are university graduates than for others. And there is a difference in motivation according to parents' academic background.

Analysis of motivation for study and indicators of Gakureki-shakai imaging leads to the following results. The strength of the image certainly has influence on the motivation for study regardless of parents' academic background, which supports the Homo-economicus framework. Ordered probit model analysis shows that the image has a positive effect on motivation that is statistically significant at the 1% confidence level. Moreover, the same results is attained within each group, significant at the 10% confidence level, except for the group whose fathers are not university graduates.

In conclusion the overall results are these. First, high image level of Gakureki-shakai leads to high motivation for study, and this effect remains strong when an ordered probit specification is used to control for other variables. Second, by dividing the sample into two groups, the effect of meritocratic imaging on motivation is stronger in the group of students whose mothers are university graduates than in the other group. From these results, students' motivation for study is affected by their meritocratic imaging according to their parents' academic status. We conclude that today's university students' motivation for study reflects their meritocratic imaging conditioned by their parents' academic background.