Summary
The Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) is a multidimensional measurement device intended to assess participants’ subjective experience related to a target activity in laboratory experiments. It has been used in several experiments related to intrinsic motivation and self-regulation (see weblink for references).
Description
The instrument assesses participants’ interest/enjoyment, perceived competence, effort, value/usefulness, felt pressure and tension, and perceived choice while performing a given activity, thus yielding six subscale scores. Recently, a seventh subscale has been added to tap the experiences of relatedness, although the validity of this subscale has yet to be established. The interest/enjoyment subscale is considered the self-report measure of intrinsic motivation; thus, although the overall questionnaire is called the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, it is only the one subscale that assesses intrinsic motivation, per se. As a result, the interest/enjoyment subscale often has more items on it that do the other subscales.
Strengths
+ validated instrument
‘+ used in different settings
Weaknesses
– same drawbacks as with all subjective scales; in consumer product evaluations the IMI sometimes is not sensitive enough to small variations in product interaction style
References describing the method
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/measures/IMI_description.php