The Inventory of School Motivation scale (ISM; McInerney, Yeung, & McInerney, 2000, 2001) is a new instrument designed to assess the academic goals of school students which allows students to espouse multiple goals including the socially-oriented, which research indicates are particularly salient to respondents from non-Western cultures. A Hong Kong Chinese version of the ISM was developed and evaluated in two studies involving 163 and 697 Hong Kong Chinese secondary school children. Responses to this questionnaire are shown to have good internal consistency reliability and support is provided for its construct validity in terms of its factorial structure and correlations as predicted with measures of learning strategies and self-esteem. Suggestions for further research using the ISM are provided.

Key words: motivation, learning strategies, Chinese culture, Hong Kong