Motivation and performance differences in students domain-specific epistemological belief profiles

Cluster analysis and analysis. of variance procedures were used to identify students' domain-specific epistemological belief profiles, and to examine differences in students' beliefs, motivation, and task performance. Four hundred eighty-two undergraduates completed measures regarding their beliefs about knowledge, competency beliefs, and achievement values relative to history and mathematics and participated in domain learning tasks. Cluster analysis was used to identify epistemological belief profile groups within the domains of history and mathematics. Students with more sophisticated belief profiles bad higher levels of motivation and task performance. Although the configuration of profiles differed across domains, cross-domain analyses suggested a tendency for students to be relatively consistent in the sophistication of their beliefs across domains. These findings provide evidence of the dual nature of epistemological beliefs.