Evaluating the Work Preference Inventory and

its Measurement of Motivation in

Creative Advertising Professionals
Mark W. Stuhlfaut

The Work Process Inventory (WPI; Amabile, Hill, Hennessey & Tighe 1994) measures
motivation to work; but the instrument has not been used in the field of advertising. This study
evaluates the WPI by testing it with working creative advertising professionals. Generally, the
results were consistent with its developmental research, but reliability and validity measures
indicate that more work needs to be done to achieve a truly useful tool. Eighteen external
influencers of motivation, relevant to the creation of advertising, were also tested. Data analyses
determined that two factors showed promise, and a new set of scales is proposed.

The Work Preference Inventory (WPI) is a set of
scales that measures motivation in people towards
work (Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, and Tighe 1994,
1995), and it has been used to evaluate the desire to
be creative (Amabile 1996). The WPI was devel-
oped originally through research conducted on
many different groups, including students, manag-
ers, military personnel, railroad workers, hospital
workers, and secretaries (Amabile 1996). Subse-
quently, other researchers have used the WPI to evalu-
ate motivation orientations among additional samples
of students in the United States, Canada and the
Peoples Republic of China.
Advertising is a business that thrives on creativity
(Nixon 2006), and the absence in WPI research of
samples comprised of advertising professionals is
conspicuous and concerning, particularly because
the field would seem to offer more face and exter-
nal validity to measuring motivations of creativity
than offered by the previous groups studied. Ad-
vertising as a industry would benefit, because the
more that is known about what intrinsically and
extrinsically motivates creative professionals, the bet-
ter those in the field could promote conditions that
lead to positive outcomes. Those who study the cre-
ative process in advertising would also benefit from
having the valid and reliable measurement of motiva-
tion. This paper reports the results of two applica-
tions of the WPI to advertising-professional samples;
and it compares these new results to those obtained
during the original development of the WPI. As a
next step, the paper also evaluates 18 additional ex-
ternal influences to work that are more relevant to the
production of advertising.
The Study of Motivation
When discussed in relation to work, intrinsic moti-
vation refers to the causes that stimulate the desire to
work primarily for its own value, such as when the
task is viewed as interesting, challenging, or person-
ally satisfying (Loo 2001). Intrinsic motivation is evi-
dent through a commitment to a meaningful purpose,
the choice of activities to accomplish the task, the per-
sonal sense of competence gained through performance,
and the activity of monitoring progress toward the pur-
pose (Thomas 2000). On the other hand, extrinsic moti-
vation refers to those extra-personal stimuli that affect
the desire to work, such as money, rewards, and recog-
nition, or because of some external threat (Loo 2001).
Motivation and Creativity
Motivation has been viewed as fundamental for cre-
ativity. Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity;
controlling extrinsic motivation [defined as those extrin-
sic motivating factors that control or undermine cre-
ativity, such as win-lose competitions, expected negative
evaluations, and concern for rewards] is detrimental to
creativity, but informational or enabling extrinsic motiva-
tion [defined as those extrinsic motivational factors that
enable creativity by providing information, such as es-
tablishing objectives, providing feedback, offering sup-
port, or giving recognition] can be conducive,

Mark W. Stuhlfaut (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Assis- Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising,
tant Professor at the University of Kentucky. (email: Volume 32, Number 1 (Spring 2010).
mark.stuhlfaut@uky.edu)
82
particularly if initial levels of intrinsic motivation are
high (Amabile 1996, p. 119). Another set of five critical
extrinsic detriments to creativity is: expected rewards,
expected evaluation, surveillance, deadlines, and com-
petition (Hennessey 2003).
The effects of motivation on creativity also have
been studied directly and indirectly in advertising.
Advertising is an inherently extrinsically driven ac-
tivity for people in the business who must respond to
pressures from clients, competitors, peers, and eco-
nomic factors (Moeran 2005). Professionals in com-
mercial design have been analyzed to be more
neurotic, more open to experience, somewhat extro-
verted, and less conscientious than professionals and
managers in occupations that are not evidently cre-
ative (Gelade 1997). The prospect of evaluation by
outside experts appeared to reduce self-perceptions
of creativity among advertising students (Klebba and
Tierney 1995). Top-level creative people in advertis-
ing are exceedingly aware of the oversight pressure
they received from account management to produce
better creative ideas (Reid, King, and DeLorme 1998).
In contradiction to the idea that competition and dead-
lines are detrimental to motivation and creativity
(Hennessey 2003), senior creative directors at U.S. and
Canadian advertising agencies believe competition,
deadlines and awards have a positive effect (West
1993). Perhaps the reason deadlines do not affect ad-
vertising creativity detrimentally is because, as Bur-
gess, Enzle and Schmaltz (2004) suggest, subjects in
experiments with deadlines negate the extrinsic effect
of a deadline by imposing their own time constraint,
which thereby increases their sense of self-determina-
tion. The benefits of competition in producing more
effective advertisements have been corroborated by
Vanden Bergh, Reid and Schorin (1983), who gener-
ally concluded on the basis of an experiment that the
more alternatives generated, the better the chances of
obtaining more interesting creative ideas.
Measuring Motivation
Many early studies of motivation in regards to work
typically measured the amount of free time that sub-
jects were willing to spend on an experiment and
interpreted their response to a reward as evidence of
an effect. A meta-analysis, however, found support
only for the negative effect of extrinsic motivation on
intrinsic motivation in the free-time condition, thus
suggesting that the effect depends on how the inde-
pendent variable is measured (Wiersma 1992).
A better measure of intrinsic and extrinsic motiva-
tion would be useful at an individual level to help
Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising
people assess their own motivations and then make
educational, job, and career choices that ensure a good
fit between their motivations and their life choices
(Loo 2001). Assessing motivational levels should help
researchers understand and predict behavior, includ-
ing how people might be more creative, and working
professionals might also be more productive if they
became more conscious of positive and negative in-
fluences on their psychological state (Amabile 1996).
The only measure of motivation, relevant to the
desire to produce advertising, that was found through
a literature review was a three-item scale: 1) the prod-
uct or service offered a number of creative directions; 2)
designing advertising for this product or service was
fun; and 3) working with this product or service was
interesting (Sasser 2006). This scale was subsequently
refined to a two-item scale: designing advertising for
this product or service was fun; and working with this
product or service was interesting (Sasser, Koslow, and
Riordan 2007). The question here is: Are there scales
from the broader study of creativity that can be applied
to the creative production of advertising?
The Work Preference Inventory (WPI) is a set of
scales that assesses the individual differences in the
degree to which adults perceive themselves to be in-
trinsically and extrinsically motivated in work situa-
tions (Amabile et al. 1994, p. 952). It was developed
initially by testing the scales on samples of students and
working adults. Since its initial publication, researchers
have cited the WPI more than 80 times in academic
literature and have used it to analyze motivation ori-
entations of students (Brownlow, Gilbert, and Reasinger
1997; Conti 2001; Moneta 2004; Moneta and Siu 2002),
people in business (Malka and Chatman 2003), and pro-
fessional artists (Amabile 1996). Variations of three items
from the extrinsic scale of the WPI were used to evalu-
ate the effect of rewards on creativity using undergradu-
ate students (Cooper and Jayatilaka 2006).
The WPI consists of 30 statements (Table 1) admin-
istered with four-point scales (never or almost never
true, sometimes true, often true, or always or almost
always true) to force positive- or negative-valence re-
sponses. Fifteen statements comprise two subscales
for intrinsic motivation (IM), Challenge and Enjoy-
ment, and 15 statements comprise two sub-scales for
extrinsic motivation (EM), Outwardness and Com-
pensation. These subscales were originally developed
from a review of the literature about intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations, factor analysis, and retesting.
The IM scales were built on five underlying constructs:
self-determination, competence, task involvement,
curiosity, and interest; and the EM scales were built
on five other constructs: evaluation, recognition, com-
Spring 2010
petition, rewards, and control. The authors of the WPI
created the scales, based on the underlying assump-
tion that the extrinsic and intrinsic motives coexist,
with the intention that the bifurcated measures could
be used independently. The authors also sought to
assess motivation directly, rather than through gen-
eral causal orientations, the approach used by Deci
and Ryan (1985). The purpose of the subscales was to
determine if intrinsic and extrinsic motivations con-
tained any meaningful dimensions.
The WPI was developed by surveying 2,418 respon-
dents, comprised of 1,363 students and 1,055 working
adults, such as research scientists, chief executive offic-
ers, railway workers, hospital employees, and secretar-
ies (Amabile et al. 1994). As developed, the WPI primary
scales were essentially orthogonal with the scales corre-
lated at -.08. Test-retesting showed generally very good
stability as reliabilities with student and adult groups
were maintained over intervals of 6, 12, 24, 42 and 54
months (Amabile et al. 1994). While the instrument was
stated to be reliable in evaluating working adults with
Cronbachs alphas of .75 for the IM scale and .70 for the
EM scale, its primary and secondary scales (see Table 2)
fell short of .80, the generally accepted standard for
basic research (Nunnally 1978). The primary scales also
fell slightly short of the standards of .76, the mean alpha
for studies of motivation, and .77, the mean alpha for
studies of businesspersons and for scale development
(Peterson 1994). Some problems also have been reported
using student samples in regards to a lack of fit with the
two-factor intrinsic-extrinsic structure and weaker sup-
port for the extrinsic scale than the intrinsic scale; still,
other researchers have concluded that the WPI shows
promise as a useful tool in describing and understand-
ing work motivation in the field of education (Loo 2001).
As a possible indication of the WPIs usefulness for
studying working adults in advertising, its IM scale
correlated positively in its developmental testing with a
measure of creativity, the Kirton Adaption-Innovation
Inventory (Kirton 1976}, r =.41, p<.001, as predicted,
and EM scale correlated negatively: r=-.18, p<.01
(Amabile et al. 1994). Generally, WPI scores were re-
ported to be independent of response bias, based upon
a lack of correlation with Marlowe-Crowne social-de-
sirability scores, except for the Extrinsic Outward (EO)
scale, but the result was thought to be not problematic
due to the scales lower means and the possibility of
some false negatives (Amabile et al. 1994).
There has been a long tradition of studying gifted
people to understand what makes them more cre-
ative than the everyday person (e.g. Gardner 1993;
Albert 1990; Stokes 2006). The WPI was developed
using samples of people in uncreative professions or,
83
at least, professions with a lack of artistic production.
This is not to say that nurses, railroad workers and
managers cannot be creative, but if the instrument is
going to be used to evaluate the motivation to be
creative, the developmental samples should have been
designed to include people known to exhibit creativ-
ity. Only one adult sample from the original research
consisted of 34 employees from an advertising com-
pany, and its report (Amabile et al. 1994) did not
specify if the company was an advertising agency or
whether or not the participants were people directly
responsible for the creation of advertisements. This is
problematic for the study of motivation and creativ-
ity, because the advertising company could have been
a sign company, a media sales company, or an adver-
tising specialties firm, which all are not involved nec-
essarily in the development of new creative ideas. For
example, a sign company may be merely executing
the ideas of others in making an advertisement. Fur-
ther, the lack of specificity in the description of the
advertising company may be problematic because
even if it was an advertising agency, the sample could
have included account managers, media planners and
buyers, researchers and various staff personnel, who
were not directly involved and not responsible for the
creation of advertising. This paper argues that, to prop-
erly assess the motivation to be creative in advertis-
ing, the testing of the WPI should focus on the
population of creative professionalssuch as art di-
rectors, copywriters, and creative directorswho are
primarily involved in the creative function. If the WPI
is generally valid and reliable for studying motiva-
tion orientation to work, a representative sample of
creative advertising professionals should extend the
use of the WPI and corroborate the measurement of
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Therefore, the fol-
lowing research question is warranted:
RQ1: How useful is the WPI for measuring
the motivation of creative profession-
als in advertising?
Method
A cross-sectional, quantitative study was conducted
using the WPI to evaluate the motivation of creative
advertising professionals. The study was split into
two samples to test a possible effect of using six-point
scales as opposed to the original four-point scales. In
hindsight, splitting the sample by scales was unpro-
ductive, and it complicated the analysis, but as will be
explicated here, a transformational method was em-
ployed to combine the two sets of data to see if the
larger data set produced any increase in reliability.
84
Results are reported here for each sample, and then
additional results are given for a combined data.
Samples
The sample consisted of copywriters and art direc-
tors who work with in advertising agencies in the United
States. These individuals are the people in the business
who generate the initial advertising ideas and make the
initial judgments about which of these ideas are the
most creative. The population of these creative profes-
sionals, from which the sample was drawn, is difficult
to determine because there is no accurate census; there-
fore, advertising agencies served as a sampling frame
from which to select the desired participants.
There are approximately 5,000 advertising agencies
in the United States (LexisNexis 2006). Using a random
number to start, the name of a copywriter or an art
director was selected in an alternating manner from
every fourth listing. In most cases, however, the se-
lected listing did not provide a name of the desired
individuals. When this occurred, the name of the cre-
ative director was chosen, because this person typically
has an art or copy background, and many creative di-
rectors remain active in their craft, particularly in small
agencies. Creative directors also supervise art directors
and copywriters, so they could serve as excellent inter-
mediaries to recruit additional participants for the study.
In a small number of cases, the Red Book listing did not
list any creative personnel. This was typical for small-
sized agencies, and in these cases, the name of the presi-
dent was chosen as the contact person who would be
asked to forward the survey to creative personnel. In
summary, this method produced a sample of 1,002
names, comprised of 198 art directors, 115 copywriters,
604 creative directors, and 85 presidents, at 971 agen-
cies. The number of names is larger than the number of
agencies because large agencies have multiple offices
and multiple creative directors per office, and they were
included to ensure adequate coverage of large agencies.
Procedure
Due to the difficulty of contacting art directors and
copywriters directly (Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan
2003, 2006), creative directors at the targeted agencies
were sent either an email message or a letter, depend-
ing upon the availability of an email address, to re-
quest that they ask the copywriters and art directors
at their agency to participate in the study. They were
given an address of a site on the Internet to access for
completion of the studys test instrument. Follow-up
e-mails or post cards were sent approximately one
Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising
week and two weeks later to non-respondents. No
incentive was offered, other than the offer to provide
participants with a copy of the general results.
Semantically, there was one problem with the word-
ing of the WPI that was corrected prior to the fielding of
the survey. Items 17 and 20 in the original text of the
scales used the word promotion to refer to the moti-
vation of improvements in a persons career, as in: I
am keenly aware of the promotion goals I have for
myself. This word would be confusing to people in
advertising, and it might lead to unreliable results with
samples in this field, because promotion is a word
that people in advertising use to refer to general marketing
communication strategies or to specific advertising tactics
that reduce prices at the point of sale (see Engel, Warshaw,
Kinnear, and Reece 2000). To keep the integrity of the WPI
and to make sure Items 17 and 20 related to career develop-
ment, the words, advancement or careers were substi-
tuted for all uses of promotions.
The returned responses were tabulated automati-
cally using the Web Surveyor software program, and
the data was downloaded to the researchers com-
puter for analysis. Reliability analyses were conducted
on the responses to the WPI scales using SPSS 15.0
software. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFIs) were
conducted on the combined data set using AMOS 7.0
software to examine the validity of the scales.
Responses
Two hundred twenty-four completed surveys were
received: 90 for Sample 1 (with the original 4-point
WPI scales) and 134 for Sample 2 (with 6-point scales).
Cleaning the data and removing several participants who
did not complete major portions of the survey or who
indicated a job function that was outside of the creative
department produced 89 participants for Sample 1 and
130 participants for Sample 2 that were used for analy-
sis with a total number of 219 participants.
Among the 219 responses, 103 were from art directors,
93 from copywriters, 2 were from people who performed
both functions, and 21 were from creative directors who
can be assumed to have either an art or copy back-
ground; thus the objective of reaching a nationwide
sample of copywriters and art directors was achieved.
Response rates were difficult to calculate precisely, due
to the design of the sample. As mentioned above, names
and addresses could not be obtained directly for copy-
writers and art directors from each selected agency,
which necessitated requesting creative directors to pass
the survey to an indeterminate number of copywriters
and art directors. While this method did not produce
specific response rates, its advantage was that it enabled
Spring 2010 85

Table 1
Work Preference Inventory Items and Scales
(Amabile et al. 1994, p. 956)

Primary Scales Secondary Scales

Intrinsic Extrinsic Compen-
Item Motivation Motivation Enjoyment Challenge Outward sation

1. I enjoy tackling problems that are

completely new to me. X X
2. I enjoy trying to solve complex
problems. X X
3. The more difficult the problem is, the
more I enjoy trying to solve it. X X
4. I want my work to provide me with
opportunities for increasing my
knowledge and skills. X X3
5. Curiosity is the driving force behind
much of what I do. X X3
6. I want to find out how good I really
can be at my work. X X
7. I prefer to figure out things for myself. X X
8. What matters most to me is enjoying
what I do. X X
9. It is important for me to have an outlet
for self-expression X X
10. I prefer work I know I can do well over
work that stretches my abilities. R2 R2
11. No matter what the outcome of a
project, I am satisfied if I feel I gained
a new experience. X X
12. Im more comfortable when I can set
my own goals. X X
13. I enjoy doing work that is so absorbing
that I forget about everything else. X X
14. It is important to me to be able to do
what I most enjoy. X X
15. I enjoy relatively simple, straight
forward tasks. R2 R2
16. I am strongly motivated by the money
I can earn. X X
17. I am keenly aware of the career1 goals
I have for myself. X X
18. I am strongly motivated by recognition
I can earn from other people. X X
19. I want other people to find out how
good I really can be at my work. X X
20. I seldom think about salary and
advancement1. R2 R2
21. I am keenly aware of the income
goals I have for myself. X X

(continued)
86 Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising

Table 1 (continued)
Work Preference Inventory Items and Scales
(Amabile et al. 1994, p. 956)

Primary Scales Secondary Scales

Intrinsic Extrinsic Compen-
Item Motivation Motivation Enjoyment Challenge Outward sation

22. To me, success means doing

better than other people. X X
23. I have to feel that Im earning
something for what I do. X X
24. As long as I can do what I enjoy,
Im not that concerned about
exactly what Im paid. R2 R2
25. I believe that there is no point
in doing a good job if nobody
else knows about it. X X
26. Im concerned about how other
people are going to react to
my ideas. X X
27. I prefer working on projects
with clearly specified procedures. X X
28. Im less concerned with what work
I do than what I get for it. X X
29. I am not that concerned about
what other people think of my work. R2 R2
30. I prefer to have someone set clear
goals for me in my work. X X
1. The word used in the original WPI for advancement or careers was promotions, and this word, meant to relate to career
development, would be confusing for people in advertising, who more likely use the word to describe an advertising strategy.
Therefore, the words, advancement and career, have been substituted to clarify Items 17 and 20.
2. Reverse coded
3. As corrected in Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, and Tighe (1995).

the study to survey a difficult-to-reach population, and it
increased the total number of participants.
Demographically, respondents were primarily men
(72.6%) and tended to be experienced with 56% hav-
ing spent more than 10 years in advertising. All age
groups were represented from 21-24 to more than 50;
however, 38% were in the 30- to 39-year category.
Agencies of all sizes were represented, but the largest
number of respondents (32.4%) described their agency
as having 21- to 50-employees, and 23% from agen-
cies with more than 200 employees.
Results
Reliability Analyses
The results for reliability of the two samples and a
combination of the two samples are reported in Table
2 along with the results reported for the working-
adult sample by Amabile et al. (1994) to facilitate a
comparison. To build the combined set, the four-point
scale items of Sample 1 were converted into six-point
values by subtracting one from each data point, mul-
tiplying the result by 1.667, and then adding back
one. The converted four-point data set then was
merged with the six-point data set of Sample 2 into
one data file. Across the obtained samples, all levels
of Cronbachs Alpha were below the standard of .80
(Peterson 1994) and most were below .70, the accepted
standard for advertising and marketing (Hair, Black,
Babin, and Anderson 2006); however, the obtained
alphas were similar to the previous reported levels
for working adults in Amabile et al. (1994) that were
deemed then to be satisfactory. As shown in Table 2,
combining the data did not increase the reliabilities of
the scales; the Cronbach-Alpha values fell between
Spring 2010 87

Table 2
Reliability Analyses of WPI Scales with Creative Advertising Professionals
(Cronbachs Alpha)

Amabile et al.1994 Sample 1 Sample 2 Combined

n=1,055 n=89 n=130 n=219
Scale 4-pt. scales 4-pt. scales 6-pt. scales 6-pt. scale

Extrinsic-Outward .63 .53 .58 .54

Extrinsic-Compensation .62 .74 .70 .70
Primary Extrinsic Motivation .70 .66 .68 .66
Intrinsic-Challenge .73 .68 .73 .67
Intrinsic-Enjoyment .67 .75 .56 .69
Primary Intrinsic Motivation .75 .79 .70 .76

Table 3
Confirmatory Factor Analyses

Scale 2 Df P GFI AGFI RMSEA

Extrinsic Compensation 66.941 5 .000 .883 .648 .238

Extrinsic Outward 71.704 35 .000 .943 .910 .069
Primary EM CFA not conducted
Intrinsic Challenge .586 2 .746 .999 .993 .000
Intrinsic Enjoyment 65.398 35 .001 .942 .909 .063
Primary IM 175.446 89 .000 .900 .865 .067

those obtained for the two subsidiary samples. The
results reinforced one conclusion by Amabile et al.
(1994) that further development of the secondary Ex-
trinsic-Outward scale would be useful. A weakness
in the reliability of the Intrinsic-Enjoyment (IE) scale
was also evident.
Validity Analyses
Despite the finding that no scale reached the .80
threshold of reliability, CFAs were conducted to ex-
amine the structure of the secondary and primary
WPI scales (Table 3). In doing so, it is noted that the
WPIs authors stated that the actual structure was
probably more complex than the simple intrinsic-
extrinsic distinction suggested by the literature
(Amabile et al. 1994, p. 957); but the WPIs authors
accepted the scales basic structure for three reasons:
the items groupings were conceptually meaningful,
the fit was generally considered satisfactory, and each
item correlated highest with its own scale (Amabile et
al. 1994). That being noted, confirmatory factor analy-
ses for this study first showed excellent fit with the
Intrinsic-Challenge (IC) scale (2=.586, df=2, p>.05, 2/
df=.293, RMSEA=.000). Second, although the chi-
square tests for the Extrinsic-Outward, Intrinsic-En-
joyment, and primary Intrinsic-Motivation scales were
significant, which may be the result of a bias of sample
size (Byrne 2001), the rest of the indicators for fit with
these scales appeared to be adequate (Table 3). Third,
fit of the model and the data were not acceptable for
the Extrinsic-Compensation (EC) scale, primarily due
to the large approximation of the root-mean-square
error, and, because of this finding, a CFI was not con-
ducted for the primary Extrinsic-Motivation scale.
Discussion
The Work Process Inventory (WPI) measure of mo-
tivation, which has been used extensively elsewhere,
had not been used in field of research on advertising
creativity before this study, and other scales used in
this field seemed to be inadequate. This research tested
the WPI instrument with people who directly are re-
sponsible for the creation of advertising. Valid and
reliable results would have extended the application
of the scales and given this field a credible tool to
measure motivation in creative work environments.
88 Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising

Table 4
Extrinsic MotivationOutward Secondary Scale
Rotated Component Matrix

Item* Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4

19 .772 .169 .007 .022
18 .749 .144 .024 .195
22 .716 -.014 .110 -.193
26 .464 -.128 .316 .035
30 -.021 .792 .066 .058
27 .178 .765 -.006 -.094
25 .119 -.014 .714 .113
28 .083 .077 .646 -.385
29 .037 -.093 -.064 .830
23 .016 .252 .470 .494

Eigen Value 2.249 1.235 1.181 1.080

% of Variance 19.38 13.57 12.68 11.82
*See Table 1
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

Table 5
External Motivators Affecting the Creation of Advertising

How do the following factors influence your desire to be creative?

The objective of the project
The profit of the agency
The type of product or service
Competition with other creative teams
Going along with your team
Your desire to get the job done
The possibility of a salary increase
Gaining your supervisors approval of your work
The possibility of a monetary bonus
Getting feedback from your supervisor while you work on an assignment
Budget of the project
Advancing your career by getting another job
Deadline of the project
Entering your work in award competitions
Building your creative reputation as a creative talent
Getting the clients approval
Building your portfolio
Getting a promotion to a new position within the agency
Scale:
1. Strong negative influence
2. Moderate negative influence
3. Mild negative influence
4. Weak positive influence
5. Moderate positive influence
6. Strong positive influence
Spring 2010 89

Table 6
External MotivatorsDescriptive Statistics
(n=219)

Item Mean SD

Objectives 5.14 1.000

Profit 4.15 1.313
Product type 4.95 .996
Internal competition 4.55 1.242
Going along with team 4.14 1.126
Job completion 4.87 1.122
Salary increase 4.47 1.068
Supervisor approval 4.93 .967
Bonus 4.50 1.085
Supervisor feedback 4.67 1.014
Budget of project 3.83 1.237
Career advancement 4.04 1.256
Deadline of job 3.95 1.453
Award competitions 4.37 1.180
Reputation 5.24 .861
Client approval 4.84 1.105
Build portfolio 4.96 1.006
Get promotion 4.52 1.001

The results showed, however, that, while the reliabil-
ity scores for the scales were near those obtained dur-
ing the development of the scales, the alpha levels
were not as high as accepted standards. This prob-
lematic finding is just as useful as a finding that con-
firms the scales, and perhaps more so, because it serves
to caution future researchers in the use of the WPI,
and it should stimulate the field to find improved
measures of motivation.
Possible Refinements
Intrinsic-Enjoyment secondary scale could only be
negligibly improved to .70 from .69 by dropping Item
13. In regards to the Extrinsic-Compensation scale, an
analysis of reliability demonstrated that the maximum
possible Cronbachs-Alpha level of .70 could only be
maintained by keeping all five items (Table 1items
16, 17, 20, 21, and 24). More encouragingly, however,
a reliability analysis of the five items of the Intrinsic-
Challenge secondary scale showed that Cronbachs
Alpha could be improved to .79 from .67 by reducing
the factor to Items 1, 2, and 3 (Table 1).

Exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were conducted More Relevant Indicators

to determine if higher Cronbachs Alpha values could
be produced from these data sets by reducing the
number of items. The Intrinsic-Enjoyment and Extrin-
sic-Outward scales were excellent candidates because
ten items in each scale seemed to be cumbersome. An
initial EFA of the ten items that comprised the origi-
nal Extrinsic-Outward secondary scale, however, ex-
tracted four factors through principal component
analysis (PCA) using a Varimax rotation with Kaiser
normalization (Table 4). Items 19, 18, and 22 (Table 1)
were the only items in the first factor that loaded
above .600, and a subsequent reliability analysis with
these three items only produced the Cronbachs Al-
pha, .66, which was the highest reliability value at-
tained with this set of ten items. Similarly, the
While the WPI was designed to tap motivation at
work, its items are general and miss potential exter-
nal indicators that would be relevant specifically to
the creation of advertising, as mentioned earlier in the
literature review. A few studies in the field of adver-
tising have already examined the influence of a lim-
ited number of extrinsic or external motivators on the
creative process (e.g. Ensor, Cottam and Band 2001;
OConnor, Willemain and MacLachlan 1996; and West
1993); but no formalized scale has been advanced here-
tofore. This research, in addition to testing the WPI,
measured influences of external motivation by includ-
ing an aggregated list of 18 indicators from the litera-
ture: the objective of the project, agency profit, product
 Table 7 90
Correlations of External Motivators

Go Com- Sup Feed- Bud- Car- Dead- Port-

Obj Profit Type Compet Along plete Salary App Bonus back get eer line Awards Rep Client folio

Profit .30**
Type .36** .20**
Competition -.03 .02 .10
Go along .00 .13 .13 .05
Completion .11 .22** .13 -.06 .31**
Salary -.06 .29 .03 .04 .02 .19**
Super Approval -.06 .02 .07 .12 .22** .15* .34**
Bonus -.08 .30** -.02 .02 .04 .19** .83** .25**
Feedback .07 .10 .03 .13* .24** .20** .24** .33** .30**
Budget .13* .31** .08 -.01 .16* .14* .11 -.04 .12 .08
Career .03 .01 .13* .28** -.01 .06 .26** .13* .21 .13 .18**
Deadline .19** .23** .20** .06 .23** .17* -.02 -.03 -.01 .15* .33* .03
Awards .07 .01 .08 .13 .03 .11 .24** .15* .17* .08 .13 .29** .08
Reputation .15* .07 .23** .17* .04 .21** .17* .26** .11 .14* .07 .29** .09 .45**
Client .31** .36** .28** .00 .13 .22** .01 .01 .04 .05 .22 .01 .17* .02 .14*
Portfolio -.03 .08 .17* .16* .09 .19** .21** .26** .13 .19** .08 .39** .08 .43** .45** .08
Promotion -.04 .10 .09 .09 .11 .13 .54** .35** .44** .24** .07 .33** .02 .28** .32** .14* .477

**Significant at the 0.01 level, two-tailed.

* Significant at the 0.05 level, two-tailed.
Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising
Spring 2010 91

Table 8
EFA Rotated Component Matrix for External Motivation Indicators

Item F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6

Portfolio .764 .098 .031 .170 .015 .075

Awards .748 .092 -.036 -.055 .132 -.015
Reputation .739 .018 .245 .110 -.068 .026
Career .522 .216 -.022 -.079 .174 .458
Bonus .064 .907 -.029 .103 .057 -.011
Salary .183 .906 -.014 .088 .002 .009
Promo .493 .536 .021 .198 -.074 .050
Objectives .009 -.071 .762 -.071 .075 .005
Type .177 -.074 .696 .100 -.035 .168
Client .045 .064 .660 .082 .168 -.148
Profit -.116 .417 .527 .030 .378 -.071
Go Along -.002 -.101 .020 .744 .277 -.083
Feedback .023 .273 .032 .626 .032 .229
Super Approval .235 .285 -.007 .587 -.307 .115
Job done .219 .106 .194 .481 .191 -.416
Budget .097 .135 .081 -.018 .808 -.012
Deadline .043 -.120 .198 .253 .654 .083
Competition .117 -.019 .038 .137 .030 .828
Eigenvalue 2.42 2.40 1.92 1.73 1.53 1.21
% of variance 13.43 13.30 10.71 9.64 8.49 6.74
Cronbachs .69 .91 .58 .39 .49 .69
Alpha
(italicized items)
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Rotation converged in 6 iterations.

type, inter-team competition, conformity, task comple-
tion, salary, supervisory approval, bonuses, supervi-
sory feedback, budgets, career advancement, deadlines,
award competitions, creative reputation, client approval,
portfolio building, and promotion to a new position.
Participants were asked to evaluate these constructs
by their relative effect on creative motivation with
six-point scales: strong negative influence, moderate
negative influence, mild negative influence, weak posi-
tive influence, moderate positive influence and
strong positive influence (Table 5). The descriptive
statistics are reported in Table 6, and the correla-
tions in Table 7. Most notable are the correlations
between award competitions, creative reputation
and portfolio building, and between bonuses, sal-
ary, and a promotion. An exploratory factor analy-
sis produced six factors (Table 8). Factor 1,
eliminating career advancement that cross-loads on
Factor 6, is composed of three itemsportfolio,
awards, and reputationand the factor has a
Cronbachs Alpha that comes very close to the .70
standard. Factor 2, with only 2 itemsbonus and sal-
arydue to the eliminating of the promotion item
that cross-loaded on Factor 1, has an excellent
Cronbachs Alpha of .91. Further, a CFA with the items
in Factor 1 produced a chi-square of .06, df=2, p>.05,
2/df=.03, and a RMSE of .014, so it may be concluded
that Factor 1 is a valid measure of a construct.
When these more relevant items are considered in
combination with the items from the WPI Intrinsic-
Challenge scale, it appears that the full spectrum of
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation could be measured
adequately. Therefore, a new, proposed scale of moti-
vation to create advertising might be as follows:
Intrinsic Motivation
1. The more difficult the problem, the more I
enjoy trying to solve it.
2. I enjoy tackling problems that are completely
new to me.
92
3. I enjoy trying to solve complex problems.
Extrinsic Motivation
1. I work hard to create advertising so I can
enter award competitions.
2. Building my portfolio is important to me.
3. I value what my peers think about my repu-
tation as a creative talent.
4. Its worth the effort if I get a bonus at the end
of the year.
5. I am strongly motivated to earn more money.
The three intrinsic-motivation items were taken di-
rectly from the WPI. The extrinsic-motivation items
are newly written, based on the constructs tested here:
award competitions, portfolio building, creative repu-
tation, bonuses, and salary. The salary item is a sim-
plification of Item 16 in the WPI.
Conclusion
While reliability levels for the WPI were found to be
similar to the original research, this study indicated
that more development is needed, if the WPI is to be a
reliable measure of motivation towards creativity in
advertising. Additional evaluation of indicators more
relevant to the creative production of advertising
showed promise for better results, and a new scale
was proposed. More research is needed to test and
confirm these scales. The importance of this study is
that it examined the measurement of motivation to-
wards creativity in the field of advertising for the first
time. Its implication is that the more we know more
about what intrinsically and extrinsically motivates
creative people in advertisingand the better tools
we have to evaluate these influencesthe better re-
searchers may study the effects of motivation and the
better the industry may promote conditions that en-
hance positive outcomes.
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