Goal-oriented traits describe relatively stable differences in what people value, what they strive for, and how they sustain, organize, and revise goal-directed behavior. They include both the content of goals and the motivational processes that support long-term engagement.
Unlike self-regulation, which focuses on controlling and adjusting behavior, this domain emphasizes motivation and purpose: why people act, what they pursue, how they define success, and how they maintain effort over time.
These measures describe what people value and strive for: broad personal values, life goals, aspirations, personal projects, and recurring concerns. They help explain not only how goals are pursued, but also why particular goals become important.
The Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) assess basic human values based on Schwartz's theory of value orientations, capturing motivational priorities such as benevolence, universalism, power, achievement, security, and self-direction.
The Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) is an update to Schwartz's theory, assessing 19 basic personal values based on brief portraits of people with different goals and priorities.
The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) assesses personal values by asking respondents to rank terminal values and instrumental values according to their importance as guiding principles in life.
The Self-Anchoring Striving Scale assesses personally important strivings by asking respondents to anchor their own goals, aspirations, or desired life direction on a subjective scale.
The Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Activities (HEMA-R) assesses the extent to which people pursue activities for pleasure, comfort, personal growth, meaning, and excellence.
These instruments assess broad motivational tendencies such as needs for achievement, affiliation, power, dominance, autonomy, understanding, recognition, or social connection. They describe the motivational forces that make some goals especially attractive or personally meaningful.
The Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) assesses personality needs and motivational preferences based on Murray's theory of psychogenic needs, including achievement, affiliation, dominance, autonomy, order, nurturance, change, endurance, and related motives. ©
The Personality Research Form (PRF) assesses personality traits and motivational needs derived from Murray's theory, including achievement, affiliation, dominance, autonomy, endurance, order, understanding, nurturance, and related dispositions.
The Proactive Personality Scale (PPS) assesses a stable tendency to identify opportunities, take initiative, and persist in bringing about change in one's environment.
The Motivational Trait Questionnaire (MTQ) assesses stable motivational tendencies related to personal mastery, competitive excellence, and motivation-related anxiety.
The Unified Motive Scales (UMS) assess major explicit motives, including achievement, power, affiliation, and intimacy, with approach and avoidance components.
The Multi-Motive Grid (MMG) assesses motives related to achievement, affiliation, and power using picture-based scenarios and motive-related statements. n/a
Achievement motivation describes the tendency to strive for success, meet standards of excellence, and evaluate one's performance in relation to achievement and failure. Related measures also assess fear of failure, error orientation, and attributional patterns in achievement situations.
The Achievement Motives Scale (AMS-R) distinguishes between hope for success and fear of failure, reflecting approach and avoidance components of achievement motivation.
The Work and Family Orientation Questionnaire (WOFO-3) assesses mastery, work ethic, and competitiveness as dimensions of achievement orientation.
The Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI) assesses fear of failure as a set of anticipated negative consequences of failing, such as shame, uncertain future, loss of social value, or upsetting important others.
The Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire (SAQ) assesses cognitive, motivational, and behavioral strategies used in achievement and social contexts, including success expectations, avoidance, task-irrelevant behavior, and attributional patterns.
The Error-Oriented Motivation Scale (EOMS) assesses motivational responses to one's own mistakes, including tendencies to learn from, avoid, or conceal errors.
The Mehrabian Achieving Tendency Scale (MATS), an early operationalization of achievement motivation, assesses individual differences in the tendency to approach success and avoid failure.
The Hypercompetitive Attitude Scale (HCAS) assesses a strong need to compete and win at any cost as a means of maintaining or enhancing self-worth.
The Competitiveness Questionnaire (CQ) assesses interpersonal competitiveness – the desire to outperform others – and goal competitiveness, or motivation to pursue demanding standards of achievement.
The Personal Development Competitive Attitude Scale (PDCAS) assesses a constructive orientation toward competition as a means of personal growth, mastery, and improved performance.
The Competition Avoidance Attitude Scale (CAS) assesses discomfort with and a general tendency to withdraw from competitive situations.
The Revised Competitiveness Index (RCI) assesses trait competitiveness through enjoyment of competition and contentiousness in interpersonal situations.
These measures focus on how people define success and approach goal-related situations. They help distinguish learning and mastery, performance and comparison, approach and avoidance, as well as promotion-focused and prevention-focused ways of pursuing goals.
The Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ-R) assesses four achievement goal orientations formed by combining mastery versus performance standards with approach versus avoidance motivation.
The Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ) assesses individual differences in promotion and prevention orientations.
The General Regulatory Focus Measure (GRFM) provides an alternative assessment of these motivational tendencies across contexts.
The Orientation Inventory (ORI) assesses motivational orientation toward self, interaction, or task. It is mainly relevant in organizational and applied contexts, where it helps describe whether behavior is primarily self-focused, relationship-focused, or task-focused.
These measures assess hope as a motivational-cognitive resource: the ability to generate goals, find pathways toward them, maintain agency, and sustain goal-directed effort.
The Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (AHS) assesses two key components: agency, or the perceived capacity to initiate and sustain action toward goals, and pathways, or the perceived ability to generate routes toward those goals.
The Adult State Hope Scale (ASHS) assesses momentary hope, including current agency and pathways thinking toward personally important goals.
The Domain Specific Hope Scale (DSHS) assesses hope across specific life domains, such as social relationships, academics, romantic relationships, family life, work, and leisure.
The Herth Hope Scale (HHS, HHI) assesses hope as a multidimensional resource, including positive readiness and expectancy, interconnectedness, and a sense of meaning or future possibility.
These measures assess how people relate to time, imagine the future, connect past, present, and future, and organize their life goals within a broader subjective life path.
The Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI, ZTPI-SF + TTPI) assesses broader temporal orientations, including past, present, and future perspectives.
The Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFC-14, CFC-12) assesses the extent to which individuals consider distant versus immediate outcomes when making decisions.
The Future Time Perspective Scale assesses orientation toward future goals, opportunities, and long-term planning.
The Openness to the Future Scale (OFS) assesses a positive and open orientation toward future possibilities. It captures future-related affect, perceived opportunity, and readiness to engage with change, and is studied as a protective factor for mental health.
The Future Time Orientation Scale (FTOS) assesses psychological orientation toward the future, including the perceived impact of the future on current behavior and the subjective distance of future events.
The Adolescent Time Attitude Scale (ATAS) assesses adolescents' positive and negative attitudes toward the past, present, and future. It complements broader time-perspective measures by focusing specifically on developmental attitudes toward temporal self-experience.
The Temporal Focus Scale (TFS) assesses the extent to which individuals habitually direct their attention toward the past, present, and future.
The Functions of Future Thinking Scale (FoFTS) assesses perceived functions of thinking about the future, including planning, decision-making, emotion regulation, motivation, identity, and social connection.
The Future Selves Questionnaire (FSQ) assesses thoughts about one's future selves, including how frequently people think about future versions of themselves and how clearly they can imagine them.
Goal pursuit depends on both persistence and flexibility. These measures assess long-term effort, commitment, tenacity, and the ability to disengage from unattainable goals or reengage with more realistic and meaningful alternatives.
The Grit Scale assess two components of so called Grit trait: consistency of interests and perseverance of effort.
The Goal Commitment Scale assesses the strength of attachment to specific goals and willingness to invest effort in their attainment.
The Goal Disengagement and Goal Reengagement Scale measures the ability to disengage from unattainable goals and reengage with new ones.
The Tenacious Goal Pursuit and Flexible Goal Adjustment Scales assess two complementary tendencies: persistent striving toward goals and flexible adaptation when goals become blocked or unrealistic.
These measures describe how intentions are translated into action. They assess planning, implementation, goal conflict.
The Planfulness Scale (PS) assesses the habitual use of goal-supportive cognitive strategies involving future orientation, mental flexibility, and anticipation of obstacles.
The If-Then Planning Scale (ITPS) assesses the tendency to identify opportunities and obstacles and connect them with planned goal-directed responses.
These measures focus on how people anticipate, plan, and psychologically adapt to major transitions in later adulthood.
The Process of Retirement Planning Scale (PRePS) assesses psychological and practical planning for retirement, including goal setting, preparation, decision-making, and adaptation to the retirement transition.
The Retirement Resources Inventory (RRI) assesses physical, financial, social, emotional, cognitive, and motivational resources that support adjustment and well-being in retirement.
⇒ Many questions about motivation, goals, autonomy, intrinsic motivation, and basic psychological needs are developed in more detail within the Self-Determination framework.
⇒ Self-regulation. Goal pursuit depends on self-control, monitoring, inhibition, and behavioral adjustment, especially when intentions must be translated into sustained action.
⇒ Coping. Goals often become difficult under stress, loss, uncertainty, or conflict, where coping strategies influence persistence, adjustment, and disengagement.
⇒ Work & Career. Achievement motivation, competitiveness, time urgency, work involvement, and goal commitment are especially relevant in work and career contexts.