Everything humans do is driven by a motive, which is good or bad. While it can be difficult to know what drives people to choose certain options over others at face value, there are different methods to discover this. Motivation assessments are designed to help you understand why individuals make particular decisions.  

In this article, we will discuss different types of motivation assessments and the different tools you can use for this. You’d also learn how to use Formplus to conduct motivation assessments, and interpret the results for decision-making in different contexts.  

What is a Motivation Assessment? 

Motivation assessment is a test to discover what spurs people to take a particular action, make a decision, or choose one thing over the other. It’s about evaluating an individual’s interests, desires, and preferences, and using these pieces of information to know what drives them to commit to specific expectations. 

Motivation assessment is most common in the workplace. Here, HR managers and employee branding professionals use these tests to know if a particular job ad will appeal to specific candidates and to match the best-fit candidates to the right roles. 

In some way, you can think of motivation assessment as a combination of psychometric tests and cognitive assessments. It uses forced-choice questions with rating scales to arrive at definite responses for decision-making. 

Types of Motivation Assessment 

At its core, motivation assessment helps you understand what makes people tilt towards one decision over the other. Once you get the hang of this, you can apply these tests to different facets of life. 

Here, we discuss how three common types of motivation assessment work—employee motivation assessment, student motivation assessment, and leadership motivation assessment. 

Employee Motivation Assessment

There’s a direct line equating employee motivation to workplace success. Research shows that businesses with highly motivated employees record a 21% increase in business profitability. Also, engaged employees perform 20% better than demotivated workers.

With all of this data, it’s no surprise that HR managers prioritize employee motivation assessment. But how does it work? 

Simply put, employee motivation assessment is used to measure how engaged workers are in an organization. The goal is to discover any concerns employees have that might affect their commitment to your company. During this process, employees can share suggestions on how to improve people processes to make the organization a better place to work.   

Typically, employee motivation assessments revolve around parameters like:

1. How an employee socializes with others
2. How often do they show up at work
3. How they behave in the workplace
4. How they collaborate with others 

The next question is, how often should employee motivation assessments happen? 

The truth is it depends on the structure of the organization. You can infuse these assessments with pulse surveys, conduct them separately or have them as part of quarterly employee evaluations. 

Explore: Employee Motivation Survey Template

Employee Motivation Assessment Question Samples 

1. On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to recommend our organization to other talents?

• Very likely
• Somewhat likely
• Neither likely nor unlikely
• Unlikely
• Very unlikely 

2. How would you describe your experience in this organization? 

• Excellent
• Average
• Poor

3. What is your best memory of working here? 

4. Do you think your skills are well-utilized in the business?

• Yes 
• No 

5. What do you dislike about working here? 

6. How can the organization increase your workplace motivation? 

7. I find my work challenging.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

8. How engaged are you at work?

• Very engaged
• Engaged
• Neutral
• Not engaging
• Not at all engaging 

9. My co-workers understand the value of my contribution at work.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral
• Disagree
• Strongly Disagree

10. I enjoy jumping on new projects.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral
• Disagree
• Strongly Disagree 

Pros of Employee Motivation Assessment 

1. It helps you to identify and address low employee motivation on time.
2. It helps you identify what motivates employees and plan for them.

Limitations of Employee Motivation Assessment 

1. It might not provide a true reflection of employee motivation levels.
2. The quality of data might be affected by employee response bias. 

Explore: Employee Motivation Questionnaire Template

Student Motivation Assessment

A student motivation assessment is a method of evaluating how passionate learners are about your school, plus their level of interest in learning. It’s a smart way to measure classroom engagement and to discover the type of learning experiences students have in your school. 

Explore: 7 Steps to Building a Productive Learning Environment

Oftentimes, teachers merge student motivation assessment with formative evaluation. In some other cases, the teacher can conduct these assessments separately; without any other form of evaluation. 

Explore: Free Student Motivation Survey Template

Data from student motivation assessment guides educational stakeholders to make positive adjustments that improve the quality of the curriculum and how knowledge is passed down in the classroom. 

Student Motivation Assessment Question Samples

1. How would you describe your experience in this school? 

• Excellent
• Average
• Poor

2. What is your fondest memory as a student in this school? 

3. What were your grades like in the last session? 

• Mostly A’s
• Mostly B’s
• Mostly C’s
• Mostly D’s
• Mostly E’s and F’s

4. List three challenges you face with learning.

5. How can we make the school better? 

6. How often do you participate in extracurricular activities? 

• Always
• Seldomly
• Not at all 

7. How do you feel about the school? Pick an emoji that best describes your feelings. 

8. How many years have you spent in this school? 

• Less than a year
• One year
• Two years
• Three years
• Others. Please specify 

9. I enjoy the teaching method.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree     

10. I like when teachers compliment me in class. 

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

Pros of Student Motivation Assessment

1. It helps you achieve student-centered learning.
2. It helps you to tap into the core of intrinsic motivation for better learning outcomes. 

Cons of Student Motivation Assessment

1. It can affect the objectivity of the learning curriculum. 
2. When student motivation assessment is merged with other types of educational evaluation, it consumes time and resources. 

Leadership Motivation Assessment

Leadership motivation assessment helps you to uncover the intent of people vying for positions, whether in school or in the workplace. It takes you into the minds of candidates to discover their true intentions. Once you understand this, you can choose the person who’s the best fit for the position. 

At the same time, leadership assessments help individuals to evaluate their own skills and determine if they have the requirements to hold leadership positions, regardless of the capacity. It measures soft skills like accountability and communication, and personal traits like your ability to inspire people and organize them to achieve a goal. 

Leadership Motivation Assessment Question Samples

1. Describe your last leadership experience. 

2. Do you enjoy working with others to achieve their goals?

• Yes
• Not at all

3. I enjoy coming up with ideas and strategies for my team.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree     

4. I prioritize team accomplishments over my personal successes. 

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

5. How would you react if someone stole your idea? 

6. I enjoy being the cheerleader of the team.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

7. I enjoy resolving conflicts within the team. 

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

8. How do you deal with feedback?

9. I like receiving recognition for my work. 

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

10. On a scale of 1–5, rate your communication skills. 

• Excellent
• Good
• Average
• Poor
• Very Poor

Pros of Leadership Motivation Assessment

1. It helps you to weigh candidates’ desire to lead, especially in your organization. 
2. It helps you to prioritize relevant skills for specific positions. 

Cons of Leadership Motivation Assessment

1. Survey bias can affect the quality of data from leadership motivation assessments. 

Top Motivation Assessment Tools 

Formplus 

Formplus is a simple tool for offline and online data collection. It allows you to create forms, surveys, and questionnaires for different purposes including motivation assessments. 

Why You Should Use Formplus for Motivation Assessments 

1. Multiple Form Fields 

When you sign up to Formplus, you get immediate access to more than 30 form fields to help you collect data in different formats. Rating scales, text fields, and advanced form fields like digital signature and payment fields are some examples of field options in Formplus. 

2. Offline Forms 

Formplus supports offline data collection which means you can conduct motivation assessment in remote areas or places without access to the internet. All responses submitted in offline mode would be uploaded to our secured servers when the internet connection is restored. 

3. Form Sharing 

You also have access to multiple form sharing options with Formplus. Outside of sending the form link, you can share your assessment survey via QR code, add it to your social media platforms or send personalized email invitations to respondents. 

4. Form Analytics

Formplus allows you to gain useful insights into your data collection process without any need for coding. You can access important metrics such as the total number of form views, weekly and daily submissions plus the physical locations of form submissions in the form analytics dashboard. 

5. Export Data as Google Sheet or CSV

With Formplus, it is easy to organize and analyze form data for motivation assessment. You can directly export form data and folders to others in different file formats including PDF and CSV and you can automatically update form data in Google Sheets. 

Interviews 

An interview is a research technique that allows you to ask a series of questions to help you gather relevant information from your audience or participants. Typically, interviews are used for qualitative research but they also come in handy in quantitative data gathering. 

Depending on the type of data you want to collect, your interview process can be structured, unstructured or semi-structured. In a structural interview, the researcher follows a strict sequence and asks a lot of close-ended questions. But for an unstructured interview, there’s no strict sequence and you’d have more open-ended questions. 

How to Conduct Motivation Assessment with Formplus 

To conduct a motivation assessment with Formplus, you need to create a survey and share it with respondents. Using the form builder, Formplus allows you to create custom forms using multiple fields, options, and features. Here’s a simple way to go about this. 

Step 1: Go to the Formplus website and sign in to your account. If you don’t have a Formplus account, you can sign up for one here. 

Step 2: Click the “create new form” button on your dashboard to access the form builder. 

Step 3: Now, you have access to the form builder. Drag and drop form fields from the builder’s inputs section into your form. 

Step 4: After adding preferred fields, use the pencil icon beside each field to access the editing tab. Here, you can add questions and options to the field. You can also change the setting of the fields to be hidden or read-only. 

Step 5: Save all changes to access the builder’s customization section, automatically. 

Step 6: Use the different options and features in the customization section to change the appearance of your motivational assessment form. For example, you can create custom themes, add your organization’s logo and so on. 

Step 7: Now, go to the builder’s “form sharing” section—this is where you decide how to administer your survey. You can copy the form link and send it to respondents or you can share your motivational assessment form via QR code, or send out email invitations with custom links. 

Conclusion 

Data from motivation assessments drive informed decision-making, especially when it’s time to choose individuals for certain positions. By assessing an individual’s reason for a particular desire, you would know whether they are the best fit for a role. 

Like every other type of assessment, the strength of motivation tests lies in the quality of the questions. Always remember that if you ask the wrong questions, you’d arrive at invalid conclusions that fail to reflect the actual state of things.