The Achievement Motives Scale (AMS): theoretical basis and results from a first try‐out of a Czech form

The achievement motive concept refers to a relatively stable personality characteristic in terms of a capacity to anticipate affects in achievement situations. The motive to achieve success (M s ) refers to the individual's capacity to anticipate positive affects, and the motive to avoid failure (M f ) refers to a capacity to anticipate negative affects in achievement situations. Based, among other things, on the conceptualizations of motives, a measurement was constructed to tap the two aspects (M s and M f ) of motivation. Over the years the scale has been translated to several languages and used in a number of studies. The Czech version of the scale is an adapted translation of the English one, and was administered to 179 pupils in the sixth grade in 1989. Further, the subjects were retested after an interval of 12 weeks. The analyses indicate that the psychometric properties of the Czech version of AMS are promising.