Investigating the Relationship between Academic Motivation and Academic Performance in Clinical Students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: The main element of being a student is learning and pursuing knowledge. A student is an individual who has a strong motivation for seeking knowledge and increasing his/her insight to increase the level of scientific information and deepen his understanding. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between academic motivation and academic performance of medical students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (Shiraz, Iran).Methods: This research was an applied descriptive-analytical study. The study population was all the clinical medical students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (Shiraz, Iran). McInerney’s standard academic motivation questionnaire was used to collect the required data for the study. The study population was 293 clinical students who were selected as a sample.Results: Based on the results of this study, there was a significantly positive correlation between the level of academic performance of clinical medical students and the dimensions of academic motivation including the tendency to acquire ability (P=0.043, r=0.118), tendency to perform (P=0.013, r=0.146), and tendency towards external goals (P=0.034, r=0.124). The results of this study also showed that only the dimension of motivation for academic progress had no significant correlation with the academic performance of clinical students (P=0.096, r=0.098).Conclusion: In general, the findings of this research indicated that academic motivation in students was one of the factors influencing academic performance, and with the increase of a student’s motivation to progress, their academic performance also improves.