Abstract:

This study examined how psychological distress relates to achievement goal orientation among 298 in-school adolescents (150 male, 148 female; aged 10 to 21 years) in Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria, exposed to varying levels of community violence. Rather than treating achievement goal orientation as a single motivational construct, this study disaggregated it into its four constituent orientations, mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance, and tested psychological distress as a mediator of community violence exposure (CVE) separately for each. CVE significantly predicted psychological distress, B = .215, SE = .029, t = 7.53, p < .001. Distress, controlling for CVE, significantly and positively predicted mastery-approach goals (B = .084, p = .004), performance-approach goals (B = .077, p = .001), and performance-avoidance goals (B = .070, p = .012), but not mastery-avoidance goals (B = .021, p = .514). Bootstrapped indirect effects (5,000 resamples) of CVE on goal orientation through distress were significant for mastery-approach (ab = .018, 95% CI [.006, .032]), performance-approach (ab = .017, 95% CI [.007, .028]), and performance-avoidance (ab = .015, 95% CI [.004, .028]), but not mastery-avoidance (ab = .004, 95% CI [−.009, .019]). Rather than showing a uniform association with academic motivation, psychological distress was associated with greater endorsement of mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals, suggesting a differentiated motivational profile rather than a generalized decline. Male adolescents reported significantly higher CVE than females (d = .60), with no gender differences in distress or goal orientation. These findings indicate that visible academic striving is not a reliable indicator that an adolescent has been unaffected by violence-related distress and highlight the need to examine the developmental resources that shape whether distress is expressed through adaptive or self-protective motivational strategies.