The Motivation of Final-Year Students in Thesis Completion: The Role of Self-Regulation

Completing the thesis is a compulsory subject that must be passed by students as a final project in the last semester to receive a bachelor's degree. Besides, one of the factors which encourage them in completing thesis is motivation. However, they need to maintain their motivation by controlling and managing themselves in order to reach their goal and graduate on time. The aims of this study were to capture the students’ thoughts toward the factors influencing their motivation and to know whether or not there is relationship between self-regulation and students’ motivation in thesis completion. The mixed-method research design was utilized in this study. To obtain the data, qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 4 students while quantitative data was collected through a closed-ended MSLQ and SRQ questionnaire administered to 35 students. The sample of this study was final year students of English department in batch 2017 and selected purposively. The findings of this study showed that the most factors influencing students’ motivation are both extrinsic and intrinsic factor. Furthermore, the result of quantitative data found that r = 0.688. It indicates that the correlation in this study is high. Finally, the researcher concludes that there is high relationship between self-regulation and students’ motivation in thesis completion.