 4. Achievement Goal Complexes  111
Operationalization and  Study of  SDT‑Derived 
Achievement Goal  Complexes
Vansteenkiste, Smeets, et al., (2010) were 
the first to use SDT to operationalize rea -
sons behind achievement goals. In two stud -
ies, secondary school students first reported 
their performance-  approach goals (e.g., 
“My goal at school is to get a better grade 
than most other students”; p. 210). Then, 
they reported the autonomous reasons con -
nected to their performance-  approach goals 
(e.g., “[I pursue this goal because] I find 
this a highly stimulating and challenging 
goal”), as well as the controlled reasons con -
nected to these same goals (e.g., “[I pursue 
this goal because] I have to comply with the 
demands of others such as parents, friends, 
and teachers”; p. 338). The authors ob -
served that autonomous reasons connected 
to performance-  approach goals were a posi -
tive predictor of beneficial educational out -
comes (e.g., adaptive learning strategies, 
persistence, performance). More important -
ly, they observed that the relation between 
performance-  approach goals and most 
of these beneficial educational outcomes 
dropped to nonsignificance (or diminished 
considerably) when they statistically con -
trolled for the autonomous reason variable. 
Similar findings were later observed for other 
types of outcomes (e.g., satisfaction, positive 
affects), other achievement domains (e.g., 
work settings, sport setting), as well as with 
mastery-  approach goals and autonomous 
reasons connected to mastery-  approach 
goals (Gaudreau & Braaten, 2016: Gillet et 
al., 2017; Gillet, Lafrenière, Huyghebaert, 
& Fouquereau, 2015; Gillet, Lafrenière, 
Vallerand, Huart, & Fouquereau, 2014; 
Vansteenkiste, Smeets, et al., 2010).
The disappearance (or diminishment) of 
the influence of achievement goals when 
partialing out the influence of the autono -
mous reasons to which they are connected 
has often been interpreted as indicating that 
the influence of achievement goals might 
be reducible to the influence of reasons. 
For instance, Vansteenkiste, Mouratidis, et 
al. (2010) stated that such findings “sug -
gest that the association between PAp [i.e., 
performance-  approach goals] and well-being 
outcomes is not very robust” (p. 236). More -over, Gillet et al. (2015) stated that “moti -
vation underlying achievement goals are 
stronger predictors of subjective well-being 
than the endorsement of goals themselves” 
(p. 858), whereas Deci and Ryan (2016) con -
cluded that “people’s motives . . . [are] more 
important that the strength of the goals 
themselves in predicting various educational 
outcomes” (p. 19). These interpretations— 
at least implicitly—  question the predictive 
utility of achievement goals when studying 
achievement motivation (but see Vansteen -
kiste, Mouratidis, et al. [2014, p. 142] for 
more nuanced “theoretical reflections”).
Sommet and Elliot (2017) challenged 
these interpretations. They noted that the 
structural form of the reason variable in the 
aforementioned research is in fact that of an 
achievement goal complex (i.e., “ achieve -
ment goal  BECAUSE reason”). Thus, it 
should not be surprising that the influence 
of a given achievement goal is eliminated or 
reduced when researchers control for a re -
lated achievement goal complex, since the 
two variables overlap in content (see Senko 
& Tropiano, 2016, for a similar point). Sim -
ply put, the achievement goal is assessed 
a first time as a focal goal, and a second 
time as part of a composite goal complex. 
An alternative approach to assessment that 
disentangles the influence of goals from the 
influence of reasons focuses on three com -
ponents: (1) the focal goal component; (2) 
the focal reason component; and (3) the goal 
complex. From this perspective, the focal 
goal component should be detached from 
any exogenous reason elements and assessed 
with items such as “My goal is to learn” 
(mastery-  approach goals) or “My goal is to 
outperform others” (performance-  approach 
goals). The focal reason component should 
be detached from any specific exogenous 
goal elements and assessed with items such 
as “I pursue goals because I find them chal -
lenging” (autonomous reasons) or “I pursue 
goals because others will reward me only if 
I achieve these goals” (controlled reasons). 
The goal complex should encompass one 
“pure” goal and one “pure” reason, and 
be assessed with items such as “My goal is 
to learn because I find this a challenging 
goal” (autonomous mastery-  approach goal 
complex) or “My goal is to outperform oth -