Achievement goals of traditional and nontraditional aged college students: Using the 3 × 2 achievement goal framework

• We assess differences in traditional and nontraditional students’ goal orientations.
• Traditional students endorsed other-approach and other-avoidance goals.
• Other-avoidance goals are negatively related to academic achievement.

In this paper we present the results of a study meant to investigate whether traditional and nontraditional students differ in their achievement goals as described by the 3 × 2 framework of Achievement Goal Theory. A total of 121 traditional and 36 nontraditional students were assessed using the 3 × 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire. The traditional students endorsed other-approach and other-avoidance goals to a greater degree than nontraditional students. Other-avoidance goals were negatively related to students’ cumulative GPA. We discuss the implications of our findings concerning differences in traditional and nontraditional students’ achievement goals, along with avenues for future research.