Longitudinal interrelations among self-efficacy, interest value, and effort cost in adolescent students’ English achievement and future choice intentions

We investigated the longitudinal interrelations among self-efficacy, interest value, and effort cost in adolescent students’ educational outcomes in the English domain across one year. The latent cross-lagged model based on a sample of 690 Chinese middle school students revealed significant reciprocity between self-efficacy and effort cost. Prior effort cost also emerged as a significant predictor of later interest value. These findings suggest that effort cost plays an important role in the development of students’ academic motivation in English. In addition, self-efficacy and effort cost significantly predicted academic achievement, whereas self-efficacy and interest value significantly predicted future choice intentions. These results indicate the importance of considering students’ expectancy, value, and cost beliefs together to better understand their motivational processes in the school setting.