If you are looking for an instrument to assess student academic motivation and other student academic success factors (as well as a host of other life success and happiness-related scales), consider using the (free) Success and Happiness Attributes Questionnaire (SHAQ) to be found at our web site at California State University, Long Beach at http://http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success.

SHAQ assesses students for learning strategies, study skills, time-management, academic motivation, and a number of other factors that have been shown to relate to academic achievement and completion of degree programs. SHAQ is completely automatic for providing instant feedback of results and related help-links for students, and SHAQ also automatically accumulates data for research purposes in a form that can be fed into standard statistical packages such as SPSS.

Students receive specific feedback about what behaviors and skills are important for their academic success, and they are presented with links to pages on our http://http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success website that can provide tips and further links to other sites providing on-line help and even training for deficit areas. 

SHAQ is partly based upon earlier research on over 4,000 college students to identify factors important in academic, personal,  and career success. In addition, we are collecting data from the students who complete SHAQ that will be used for further research into these factors.

For students who are undecided about their major, SHAQ offers a special set of scales to help them make a choice. SHAQ also can assess interpersonal and emotion-management skills, help students assess life goal and value areas, and do much more!

If instructors choose to make SHAQ an assignment this semester (or in the future), I can now tell you that our data collection system seems to be working; and I can supply them with a list of students in their classes who have completed SHAQ.  That makes grading very easy.

The most recent data analysis of the first 604 SHAQ (Success and Happiness Attributes Questionnaire) users has been very encouraging.

* SHAQ users rated their learning and interest a mean of 6.01 out of a possible 7.0 [They found it very useful and interesting.]

* The 31 predictive scales SHAQ uses (such as self-management, coping skills, life themes, internal control, self-worth and confidence, interpersonal skill scales, etc.) have a pattern of significant correlations that fit our expectations and support their utility as feedback for students. They are especially good for giving feedback about overall happiness, reduced depression and anxiety, happy meaningful relationships, and other life meaning outcomes. (Many correlations are in the .30 to .60 range.)

* The academic success scales (academic motivation, learning skills, learning areas, etc.) plus self-management and emotional coping scales are moderately good at predicting academic outcomes (gpa, probation status, academic degree completion, achieving higher degrees, etc.).

* Note: Students can also use SHAQ to help pick a CSULB major if they want.

* SHAQ has been approved by the CSULB Institutional Research Board (IRB).

Students using SHAQ go http://http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success to complete the questionnaire, receive complete results they can copy or print, and receive Internet links they can click on for access to valuable self-help information to aid them in lower-scoring areas.

If you are interested in using SHAQ for a class or individual students, just refer them to the site, and you can ask them to email their results to you (if required). For an appropriate detailed handout you can give students for an assignment, click here.

If you are interested in using SHAQ for your own research purposes, go to: http://http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/success/shaq_research.htm

If you have any other questions or comments, please contact me at tstevens@csulb.edu

Thank you for your interest.

Tom Stevens PhD

Psychologist, Counseling and Psychological Services

California State University, Long Beach