Despite decades of research on achievement goals, there is still relatively little known about differences among individuals in their conceptualizations of performance goals and reasons for pursuing them in academic settings. The purpose of the present investigation was to use participants' own words, rather than survey measures or experimental manipulations, to examine the variety of reasons students gave for pursuing performance goals. Fifty-three high school seniors with relatively high scores on a survey measure of performance-avoidance goals were interviewed. Analysis of the interviews revealed that students' reasons for pursuing performance goals could be divided into 4 categories: appearance-approach, appearance-avoidance, competition-approach, and competition-avoidance. Within each of these 4 categories, students mentioned a wide variety of purposes behind their goal pursuits such as wanting to please parents, to silence nay-saying peers, and to prove something to one's self. Implications for achievement goal theory and research methodology are discussed.
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