Delegation and motivation

Studies have employed two types of measures to assess intrinsic motivation: self-report and behavioural. Effort as a measure of motivation is frequently assessed as a self-report measure that asks participants the extent to which they want to exert effort on the target activity (e.g. Schraw et al. 1998). Behaviourally, effort can be measured as the number of trials attempted during an experimental phase or the number of mouse clicks on a computer during an experimental phase (e.g. Iyengar and Lepper 1999). Yet, in comparing the results of the two, it has been questioned if they can be considered alternate indexes of the same underlying construct. Whereas behavioural measures can have multiple determinants, self-report measures may be subject to systematic reporting biases (Wicker et al. 1990).