determinants of help seeking: relations between perceived...

Journal of Educational Psychology1998, Vol. 90, No. 4, 630-643

Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0022-0663/98/$3.00

Determinants of Help Seeking: Relations Between PerceivedReasons for Classroom Help-Avoidance and Help-Seeking

Behaviors in an Experimental Context

Ruth ButlerHebrew University of Jerusalem

It was predicted that orientations to help-avoidance (HA) would predict styles of help seeking(HS). In Study 1, a total of 1,029 pupils aged 10-12 years rated reasons for HA in math class.Ratings formed 3 factors reflecting autonomous strivings for independent mastery, ability-focused concerns to mask poor ability, and expedient perceptions that help would not expeditetask completion. In Study 2, a total of 272 pupils who had endorsed one or another HAorientation could request help for math problems. An autonomous orientation was associatedwith autonomous HS, which promoted independent mastery, and an expedient orientation withexecutive HS, which expedited task completion. Pupils, especially boys, with an ability-focused orientation exhibited avoidant-covert HS: they requested least help and were mostlikely to cheat. HS was moderated by perceived threat to competence (ability-focusedorientation) but not by perceived competence.

Students often refrain from asking questions or requestinghelp when they have difficulty with their schoolwork(Dillon, 1982; Good, Slavings, Harel, & Emerson, 1987;Karabenick & Knapp, 1988; Newman & Goldin, 1990; vander Meij, 1988). Studies of help seeking in other contextsalso report that people often do not seek help, even whendoing so may alleviate real distress (see DePaulo, Nadler, &Fisher, 1983). Seeking help when one cannot solve aproblem alone seems preferable to giving up or continuingto persist unsuccessfully alone (Newman, 1991). Failure todo so can thus be construed as a form of motivated behaviorthat arises when the benefits of overcoming difficulty areoutweighed by the costs of requesting help (Nadler, 1997),or, in other words, by powerful reasons or motives to refrainfrom help seeking (Butler & Neuman, 1995). This articlethus focuses on pupils' perceived reasons for academic helpavoidance. Although help-related perceptions and behaviorsare affected also by situational factors, the present focus ison individual differences in pupils' perceptions and theirimpact on behavior. Specifically, I integrate and expand onprior analyses of help-related perceptions and behaviors topropose, first, that one can distinguish among different typesof reasons for help avoidance in the classroom and, second,that attribution of help avoidance to one or another type ofreason will be associated with qualitatively different help-seeking behaviors when pupils encounter difficulty on anacademic task.

This research was supported by Aguda Grant 94 of the IsraelFoundation Trustees. I thank Nitzan Goldschmidt, who coordinateddata collection, and participating schools and children.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed toRuth Butler, School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,Jerusalem 91905 Israel. Electronic mail may be sent [email protected].

Reasons for Help Avoidance and Patternsof Help Seeking

The literature on help seeking in both educational andother contexts has focused on two main reasons why peoplemay be reluctant to seek help. First, help seeking may beperceived as a dependent behavior that conflicts withpersonal needs for autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987) and withWestern social cultural emphases on independent masteryand self-reliance (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Studies haveconfirmed that many pupils explain reluctance to ask forhelp in terms of strivings for independent mastery (Butler &Neuman, 1995; van der Meij, 1988) and that teachers viewindependent persistence as a more desirable coping strategythan asking for help (Nelson-Le Gall & Scott-Jones, 1985).Second, people may be reluctant to ask for help because theyperceive help seeking as evidence of incompetence and thusas threatening to their perceptions of ability. Findings thatpeople are more reluctant to request help for ego-centralthan for non-ego-central activities (Nadler, 1987; Tessler &Schwartz, 1972) and request less help when tasks arepresented as a test of ability than when they are presented asopportunities to learn (Butler & Neuman, 1995) confirm therole of concerns about ability in inhibiting help seeking.Pupils, also, may cite fears of appearing incompetent toexplain reluctance to request help for schoolwork (Newman& Goldin, 1990), especially when asked to account for helpavoidance by another rather than the self (Butler & Neuman,1995).

These two types of reasons often are treated together (e.g.,Newman, 1990) as representing similar kinds of costs,which, if salient, both result in the same outcome: reluctanceto seek help. However, there seem to be grounds forproposing instead that each reason for help avoidance maybe associated with different patterns of help seeking. Pupilswho perceive help avoidance as stemming from concerns to

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DETERMINANTS OF HELP SEEKING 631

mask incompetence should indeed be reluctant to requesthelp when they have difficulty with schoolwork, becausethey perceive such requests as proof of inadequate ability.However, not asking for help is also problematic, becausefailure in classroom tasks also indicates poor ability. Onecan venture that such pupils may be tempted to resolve thedilemma between exposing inadequacy by failing andexposing inadequacy by asking for help by adopting anavoidant-covert pattern. Thus, they may seek covert help,for example, by copying answers from peers or from theback of the textbook.

In contrast, students who perceive help avoidance asstemming from strivings for independent mastery may bewilling to ask for help if their attempts to overcome adifficulty on their own are unsuccessful and if the helpavailable enhances understanding and is thus supportive, inthe long run, of their autonomy. Definitions of adaptive helpseeking (Butler & Neuman, 1995; Nelson-Le Gall, 1985;Newman & Schwager, 1995) concur in considering helpseeking to be adaptive when (a) it is necessary and initiatedwhen pupils cannot overcome a difficulty alone and (b)pupils prefer help that supports understanding and subse-quent mastery rather than help that serves just to expeditetask completion. These authors thus consider requests forhints or explanations to be more adaptive than requests foranswers. However, some pupils may request hints becausethey perceive this to be more socially desirable than askingfor the answer but may use the hints received to solve theimmediate problem rather than to promote understandingand subsequent independent problem solving. Moreover,labeling as adaptive only help seeking that promotes indepen-dent mastery does not include the possibility that anavoidant-covert style, by which pupils strive to succeedwithout exposing difficulty, may be adaptive for pupilsconcerned mainly with masking poor capacity. Thus, in thisarticle, I use the term autonomous help seeking to refer tohelp-seeking behavior that (a) is initiated after the pupilspends time trying to solve a problem alone, (b) is expressedin requests for hints that clarify strategies rather thanrequests for the answer, and (c) results in improved capacityto solve subsequent problems independently. I predict thatpupils who construe help avoidance in terms of striving forindependent mastery will display such autonomous helpseeking when they cannot solve a problem on their own.

This analysis implies that the degree to which pupilsrespond to difficulty with overt help avoidance and covertcheating, or with autonomous help seeking, will depend onthe degree to which they construe reluctance to seek help interms of concerns to mask inadequate ability, on the onehand, or of concerns to maintain autonomy, on the other.Studies (Nelson-Le Gall, 1987; Newman & Schwager,1995) have, however, identified a third pattern, whichNelson-Le Gall (1985) termed executive help seeking. Somechildren request help often, even when they do not need it,ask for answers rather than hints, and, in general, prefer tohave someone else solve a problem for them rather thantrying to solve it alone. This pattern emerged in experimen-tal studies, where children were given the explicit option torequest answers, but this is rarely the case in classrooms.

Teachers may ignore or disapprove of requests for help, andif they do respond, they rarely just provide the answer (e.g.,Nelson-Le Gall & Glor-Scheib, 1985). Thus, some pupilsmay not ask for help in the classroom, not because they wishto maintain autonomy or mask inadequate ability, butbecause they do not expect help requests to expedite taskcompletion. Such pupils may, however, request help oftenand prefer help that expedites task completion in settingswhere executive help is available and legitimate.

To summarize, my first proposal is that reasons for helpavoidance in the classroom are multidimensional and can beconceptualized in terms of three orientations: an autono-mous orientation, whereby help avoidance is attributed tostriving for independent mastery; an ability-focused orienta-tion, whereby it is attributed to desires to mask incompe-tence; and an expedient orientation, whereby reluctance toseek help is attributed to perceptions that asking for help willnot expedite task completion. My second proposal is thateach class of reasons for help avoidance will be associatedwith qualitatively different styles of responding to academicdifficulty. Specifically, I predict that an autonomous orienta-tion to help avoidance will be associated with an autono-mous style of help seeking, whereby pupils will first try tosolve problems on their own, will request hints rather thansolutions if they do not succeed, and will apply the hintsreceived to solve later problems alone. I expect pupils withan expedient orientation to display an executive pattern:They will request help relatively early, will prefer helprelevant to expediting task completion, and will be unlikelyto improve independent problem solving over time. Thispattern is similar to that described by Nadler (1997) asdependent overuse of help, whereby people prefer to haveothers solve a problem for them. Finally, I predict that pupilswith an ability-focused orientation to help avoidance willdisplay an avoidant-covert style of responding to difficulty,whereby they will request little overt help and will be mostlikely to seek covert help.

The Role of Perceived Competence VersusPerceived Threat to Competence

Although discussions of personal influences on academichelp seeking always address the possible role of perceived oractual competence, it is not clear how competence moder-ates help seeking. Some studies (Karabenick & Knapp,1991; Newman, 1990) support a vulnerability hypothesis,which predicts that willingness to seek help will be lowestamong less able students anxious to avoid further confirma-tion of low ability. Others (Nelson-Le Gall, DeCooke, &Jones, 1989; Newman & Schwager, 1995) support a consis-tency hypothesis (Tessler & Schwartz, 1972), which predictsleast help seeking among able individuals anxious to main-tain favorable perceptions of ability. Yet others (Butler &Neuman, 1995; Karabenick & Knapp, 1988) support a thirdposition that predicts that willingness to seek help will belower at both high and low than at intermediate levels ofcompetence (Butler & Neuman, 1995).

In all cases, the variable assumed to mediate the relationbetween competence and help seeking is threat to percep-

632 BUTLER

tions of ability, but none of the studies mentioned in theprevious paragraph have measured this directly. Thus, it ispossible that in some of the contexts studied, less competentstudents experienced greater threat and that in others, morecompetent students felt more threatened. If so, one canventure further that when perceived threat is high anduniform, competence itself may not moderate help seekingbecause students at all levels will be reluctant to seek help.In a similar vein, competence may not moderate helpseeking also when perceived threat is low, but in this case,most students will seek help when they need it. In the presentcontext, it seems reasonable to assume that agreement withability-focused reasons for help avoidance reflects thedegree to which the need for help is perceived as threateningto perceptions of ability. Another aim of this article is toexamine the contrasting predictions of the vulnerability andconsistency hypotheses more directly by examining whetherperceived threat, as measured by endorsement of ability-focused reasons for help avoidance, is higher at low or athigh levels of perceived competence. In addition, myanalysis suggests that actual help seeking will be moderatedby perceived threat to competence rather than by perceivedcompetence. Thus, I predict that perceived competence willnot moderate reluctance to seek help among pupils with anability-focused orientation to help avoidance, among whomperceived threat is similar and high, and will not moderatewillingness to seek help among pupils with an autonomousor expedient orientation, among whom perceived threat toperceptions of ability is similar and low.

The Role of Gender in Moderating Help-RelatedPerceptions and Behaviors

Findings that women request more help than men havebeen attributed to the greater social acceptability of passivedependency in women (e.g., Merton, Merton, & Barber,1983). In contrast, Greenglass (1993) and Nadler (1997)have suggested that they may reflect active social copingamong women and underuse of social support among men.Evidence that males are more invested in maintainingfavorable perceptions of ability (Roberts, 1991) suggestsfurther that in academic settings, males may be more likelythan females to underuse help because of concerns aboutexposing poor ability. The focus in this article on qualitativedifferences in help-related perceptions and behaviors mayclarify the role of gender in two ways. First, if boys areindeed more likely to underuse social support, at least in partbecause they are more concerned with masking low ability,they may be more likely than girls to endorse reasons,especially ability-focused reasons, for help avoidance. Sec-ond, one can predict that girls will request more help whenthey encounter difficulty than will boys but that this differ-ence will derive from higher rates of overt help avoidanceand covert cheating in boys and possibly from higher rates ofautonomous help seeking among girls but not from higherrates of executive, or dependent, help seeking among girls.No studies have simultaneously tapped the three distinctstyles of help seeking described here, but some priorfindings are consistent with my predictions. For instance,

Newstead, Franklin-Stokes, and Armstead (1996) have re-ported higher rates of academic cheating among male thanfemale college students, and some studies with elementaryschool children have found no sex differences in executivehelp seeking (Nelson-Le Gall, 1987; Nelson-Le Gall &Glor-Scheib, 1985).

I conducted two studies. Study 1 examined the proposedthree-dimensional structure of perceptions of help avoidanceamong a large sample of pupils in Grades 5 and 6, who ratedtheir agreement with autonomous, expedient, and ability-focused reasons why pupils did not ask for help when theyencountered difficulty in math class. I asked about mathbecause pupils perceive math to be a difficult subject(Stodolsky, 1988) that evokes greater need for help than, forexample, reading (Newman & Goldin, 1990). I studiedchildren in the later grades of elementary school becausedevelopmental analyses of help seeking (e.g., Newman,1991) suggest that by this age, help seeking is moderatedmore by perceptions of the costs and benefits of helpseeking, which are the focus of the present study, than bycognitive limitations in understanding when one needs helpand how to elicit help from one's surroundings. In addition,ability-focused concerns to maintain positive perceptions ofability do not emerge clearly before about age 10-12(Nicholls, 1983). I first report the methods and findings fromStudy 1. I then report Study 2, which examined theprediction that pupils who endorsed mainly autonomous,expedient, or ability-focused orientations to help avoidancein math class would engage in autonomous, executive, oravoidant-covert help-seeking behaviors, respectively, asthey worked on difficult math problems several months later.

Study 1

Method

Participants. The sample comprised 1,029 Jewish Israeli chil-dren (526 boys and 503 girls, mean age 11 years 4 months),attending 38 fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms in 10 Jerusalemelementary schools, defined by the Ministry of Education asserving similar student populations (about 60% middle to highsocioeconomic status [SES] and 40% low SES, according to anindex that considers parental education and housing conditions).Permission to conduct the study was granted by the JerusalemDepartment of Education and by school principals. The Depart-ment of Education does not require parental consent for group-administered surveys that do not use experimental manipulationsand do not elicit confidential information about pupils. Childrenwere told that they could choose whether to respond to thequestionnaires; none refused.

Materials and procedure. Study 1 was group administered inmath class during die 4th month of the school year by one of sixfemale college students, as part of a larger study of attitudes towardmath. For this study, we explained that we were conductingresearch on pupils' perceptions of math class. Reasons for helpavoidance were measured with a questionnaire labeled "reasonsfor not requesting help in math class," developed for this study.Pupils read the following:

Imagine a math class. The teacher has taught some newmaterial. She gave pupils some problems and said they couldask her for help if they were having difficulty. Some of the


pupils who had difficulty with one or another problem did notask the teacher for help. We want to understand why pupils donot ask for help. Below are different reasons why pupils do notask for help. Rate for each the degree to which you agree thatit explains why pupils did not ask for help when they haddifficulty with math problems.

The 21 items were considered a priori to tap attributions of helpavoidance to autonomous strivings for independent mastery, toability-focused concerns of masking incompetence, or to expedientperceptions that asking for help would not accelerate task comple-tion (see Appendix A). Pupils rated their agreement with each on5-point scales anchored at 5 (definitely agree) and 1 (definitelydisagree). Children were asked to explain help avoidance in otherpupils because pupils seem to be more willing to attribute helpavoidance in others than in themselves to concerns with maskinglow ability (Butler & Neuman, 1995). Pupils were then given theScholastic Competence items of the Perceived Competence Scalefor Children (Harter, 1982), modified to refer to math. Scores foreach of the seven items could range from 4 (high perceivedcompetence) to 1 (low perceived competence). Items from thePhysical Competence and Social Competence scales of Hatter'smeasure were interspersed as fillers.

Finally, we explained that pupils respond in different ways to thequestionnaires and that we would be asking different types ofpupils to participate in another study. To do this, we needed toknow who they were. Pupils who were willing for us to identifytheir questionnaires were asked to write their names on a separatepage. We emphasized that if we contacted them, we would describethe new study and that pupils would be free to choose whether toparticipate.

Results

Structure of the "reasons for not requesting help in mathclass " questionnaire. The first hypothesis was that pupils'ratings of reasons why pupils did not ask for help would loadon three factors corresponding to autonomous, ability-focused, and expedient classes of reasons for help avoid-ance, respectively. Principal components analysis with ob-

lique rotation on all 21 items yielded three factors witheigenvalues greater than 1, which accounted for 50.9% ofthe variance. As Appendix A indicates, most items loaded ontheir predefined factor, but some loaded low and othersloaded high also on other factors. After examining factorloadings and the contribution of individual items to internalreliability, I retained 17 items, which are listed in Table 1.Principal-components analysis on these items yielded amore satisfactory three-factor solution, which accounted for61.3% of the variance. Internal reliability was .72 forexpedient items, .82 for autonomous items, and .87 forability-focused items.

Relations between perceived competence and gender andreasons for help avoidance. Items from each factor wereaveraged to create scales of autonomous, ability-focused,and expedient perceptions of help avoidance, respectively.Responses to the seven items of the perceived competence inmath measure (a = .89) also were averaged (M - 2.89,SD = 0.73). Previous studies had reported both linear (e.g.,Newman, 1990) and curvilinear (e.g., Butler & Newman,1995) relations between help seeking and competence, sopupils were assigned to high (highest 30%), intermediate(next 40%), or low (lowest 30%) levels of perceivedcompetence. Correlations between autonomous and ability-focused perceptions (r — -.11), autonomous and expedientperceptions (r = .12), and ability-focused and expedientperceptions (r = .22) were low but, because of the largesample, significant at p < .001. Data were thus analyzedwith a 3 (perceptions of help avoidance) X 2 (sex) X 3(perceived competence) multivariate analysis of variance(MANOVA), with the first as a repeated measures factor.Pupils endorsed autonomous perceptions (M = 3.61) morethan they did ability-focused perceptions (M = 2.93) andexpedient perceptions (M = 2.20), but there was a signifi-cant within-subjects effect for the interaction of perceptionsof help avoidance with perceived competence, F(2, 2046) =

Table 1Factor Loadings for Reasons for Not Requesting Help in Math Class, Study 1

Item

Factor

Ability-focused Autonomous Expedient

Don't want friends to see they are having difficultyDon't want everyone to look at themDon't want teacher to see they don't understandThey were embarrassedThey don't want to look stupidWant to overcome difficulty by themselvesThink that if they try they will work it out themselvesThink most important thing is to use their own headWill feel good if they work it out aloneWant to try to work out the problem by themselvesEnjoy it more if do it aloneThink teacher won't tell them the answerThink their answer won't count if they get helpThink explanation will take so long they won't finishThink teacher doesn't like them to ask for helpThink that it will take them even longer to finishThink that what teacher says won't help them get the answer

Note. Factor loadings less than .30 were not reported.

.77

.74

.84

.83

.85.69.68.71.76.77.75

.64

.61

.66

.66

.62

.64

634 BUTLER

4.57, p < .001, MSE = 0.61. Analyses for the effects ofperceived competence on each scale were significant onlyfor ability-focused perceptions, F(2, 2046) = 12.17, p <.001, MSE = .61. Mean endorsement of ability-focusedreasons for help avoidance increased with perceived compe-tence (Ms = 2.77,2.96, and 3.06, for low, intermediate, andhigh levels, respectively). This result supported the consis-tency hypothesis (Tessler & Schwartz, 1972), which predictsthat perceived threat in the event of difficulty will be highestamong people with favorable self-perceptions. I proposedearlier that studies that had examined relations betweenself-perceptions and help seeking might have yielded incon-clusive findings because they measured perceived compe-tence rather than perceived threat to competence. Thus, oneof the aims of Study 2 is to examine the novel prediction thatperceived competence will not moderate reluctance to seekhelp among pupils who endorse ability-focused perceptionsor willingness to seek help among pupils who endorseautonomous or expedient perceptions.

There was also a significant effect for the interaction ofperceptions of help avoidance and sex, F(2, 2046) = 4.64,p < .01. Analyses for gender differences on each scale ofperceptions of help avoidance were significant only forexpedient perceptions F(2,2046) = 11.47,/> < .001, MSE =.61. Boys (M = 2.27) endorsed expedient perceptions morethan did girls (M = 2.11). The finding that endorsement ofautonomous perceptions of help avoidance did not differ bygender was consistent with proposals (e.g., Nadler, 1997)that females' greater willingness to request help need notreflect greater dependency. However, my proposal thatgender differences in help seeking might derive, at least inpart, from stronger tendencies among males to perceive helpseeking as evidence of low ability was not supported,because boys and girls endorsed ability-focused reasons tothe same extent. One aim of Study 2 is to examine whetherboys will engage in more overt help avoidance and coverthelp seeking than will girls, as originally predicted, or whetherthey will engage in more executive help seeking, as implied bytheir stronger endorsement of expedient perceptions.

Discussion

Most important, the results from Study 1 supported thehypothesized threefold distinction among autonomous, abil-ity-focused, and expedient perceptions of help avoidance.The help-seeking literature tends to treat the exposure ofdependency and of low competence as representing psycho-logical costs of help seeking, which, if salient, will bothinhibit help seeking. The finding that Autonomous andAbility-Focused perceptions formed two, barely correlated,factors and that Expedient perceptions formed a third factoris consistent with my proposal that one can identify qualita-tively different reasons for help avoidance. The results thusprovide preliminary justification for examining whetherdifferent orientations to help avoidance are associated withdifferent help-related behaviors. It is, however, less clear inthe case of such a multidimensional structure than in that ofa single dimension of perceived costs of help seeking (e.g.,Ryan & Pintrich, 1997) how best to characterize individual

pupils, especially because, overall, pupils agreed most withautonomous and least with expedient perceptions of helpavoidance. Studies of students' perceptions of control (But-ler & Orion, 1990) and achievement goals (Meece & Holt,1993) also found that pupils tend to endorse internalperceptions of control and mastery goals, respectively.However, these studies also found that the degree to whichpupils endorsed other, less normative, perceptions predictedconceptually relevant attitudes and behavioral outcomes.Selection of pupils for Study 2 thus considered scores on allthree dimensions; pupils were considered to express aparticular orientation if they scored above the mean on thetarget orientation and below the mean on both otherorientations.

Study 2

The main aim of Study 2 was to examine my predictionsthat endorsement of autonomous, expedient, or ability-focused orientations to help avoidance in math class will beassociated with autonomous, executive, or avoidant-covertstyles of help seeking in math, respectively. These predic-tions could be adequately tested only in a setting where allthree help-seeking styles could be expressed. In the class-room, even pupils with an autonomous orientation might notengage in autonomous help seeking if the teacher does notknow how to give useful hints, and pupils with an expedientorientation might not engage in executive help seeking if theteacher does not tell them the answer. Study 2 thus examinedhelp seeking in an experimental setting where pupils couldchoose whether and when to ask for help and what kind ofhelp they want. Pupils worked individually on difficult mathproblems that were based on common principles. They couldask for hints that drew attention to these principles and wererelevant to solving later problems. Thus, I was able toexamine whether asking for hints for early problems facili-tated subsequent independent problem solving and whether,as expected, pupils with an autonomous orientation to helpavoidance would be most likely to apply early hints tosolving later problems alone. The alternative to asking for ahint was to ask for directions on how to compute the answer.Asking for directions was not relevant to solving laterproblems but was clearly a request for help, because childrencould check their answers independently from an answersheet. Children could request help before they recorded ananswer, so operationalizing the necessity of requests for helpin terms of prior failure (e.g. Newman & Schwager, 1995)was not appropriate. Instead, I measured latency for helprequests, on the assumption that this would reflect the degreeto which children tried to solve problems alone and experi-enced difficulty before asking for help. I predicted thatchildren who had endorsed autonomous perceptions of helpavoidance would spend more time than children who hadendorsed expedient perceptions on trying to solve problemsalone before requesting help. Finally, children could "cheat"by copying the answer from the answer sheet. I predictedthat children who had endorsed an ability-focused orienta-tion to help avoidance in the classroom would be least likelyto ask for overt help (hints and directions to compute theanswer) and would be most likely to copy the answer.


My predictions that different perceptions of help avoid-ance would be associated with qualitatively different help-seeking behaviors rested on the assumption that childrenconstruct, and are guided by, distinctive perceptions of boththe costs and the benefits of seeking help. For example, Iargued that pupils who endorsed autonomous perceptions ofhelp avoidance would be most likely to engage in autonomoushelp seeking because they would tend to construe help seeking asguided by autonomous strivings to learn and promote mastery.Thus, in Study 2,1 examined both help-seeking behaviors andpupils' perceived reasons for seeking help in the experimen-tal setting. I predicted first that perceptions of help seekingalso would load on three factors representing autonomousperceptions of help seeking, as guided by strivings to promotemastery; expedient perceptions of help seeking, as guided bydesires to expedite task completion; and ability-focused percep-tions that help seeking reflected low ability and desire toavoid failure, respectively. I predicted second that agreementwith autonomous, expedient and ability-focused perceptions ofhelp seeking in the experimental setting would be highest amongpupils who had endorsed autonomous, expedient, or ability-focused perceptions of classroom help avoidance, respectively.

Method

Participants. Almost all Study 1 participants agreed that wecould identify them. To ensure confidentiality, we drew up separatelists of pupil names by pupil identification numbers for each classand discarded the page from Study 1 on which pupils wrote theirnames. Principals in two schools requested that we leave our listswith class teachers for safekeeping during the time that elapsedbetween Study 1 and Study 2. Unfortunately, three of the sixteachers lost the lists, with the result that we were able to identifyonly 920 pupils. Participants for Study 2 were chosen from thesepupils. Pupils were first identified as low, medium, or high onperceived math competence as described above. Scores on thereasons for help avoidance scales served to identify children at eachlevel of perceived competence who endorsed autonomous, ability-focused, or expedient orientations to help avoidance, respectively.A fairly rigorous definition was used, so that pupils were selected iftheir score on one or another of the Autonomous, Ability-Focused,or Expedient scales was above the mean and their scores on bothother scales were below the mean.11 had hoped to identify about 20children in each cell of the Perceptions of Help Avoidance XPerceived Competence X Sex MANOVA, but the final sampleincluded 272 participants. As Table 2 indicates, for most cells, Iidentified about 15 pupils; 15 of the identified pupils did notparticipate because parents did not give their consent or becausethey were absent when Study 2 was administered in their schools.

Experimental task. The task consisted of numerical seriesproblems. Problems consisted of two alternating series. To solvethem, children needed to understand that there were two series, toidentify which series led to the incomplete number, and tounderstand what operation they needed to perform on it to get to theanswer. Problems were pretested on 45 children in two differentelementary schools, who were rated by their teachers as low,medium, or high in math ability. The aim was to identify sixproblems that even most high-ability students would not solvealone but that even most low-ability children could solve if given ahint (see below). All problems presented alternating series butrequired mathematical operations of increasing complexity. Pupilsalso were given problems based on a single series, to identify one

Table 2No. Participants in Study 2, by Perceptions of HelpAvoidance, Perceived Competence (PC), and Sex

Perception

AutonomousIdentifiedParticipated

Ability focusedIdentifiedParticipated

ExpedientIdentifiedParticipated

Low PC

Boys

1514

1716

1515

Girls

1616

1616

1615

Intermediate PC

Boys

1414

1615

1615

Girls

1615

2118

1515

High PC

Boys

2116

1515

1515

Girls

1515

1615

1212

easy, one moderate, and one difficult problem. These problemswere presented as practice problems and also served to assignpupils to different levels of initial skill. Experimental and practiceproblems used in Study 2 are presented as Appendix B.

Procedure, The experiment was administered individually dur-ing school hours in Months 7 and 8 of the school year by one of fivefemale college students, who were unaware of pupils' orientation tohelp avoidance. The experimenter reminded the whole class thatwhen they had responded to questionnaires earlier in the year, wehad said that we would be asking some pupils to participate inanother study. To avoid offending children who were not selected,the experimenter said that we wanted to include pupils from manydifferent schools, so we could invite only a few in each class toparticipate. She then invited the selected pupils individually to aside room and explained that we were developing math materialsand that the pupil would work on numerical series problems. Sheexplained that in each series, numbers progressed according tosome rule and demonstrated two examples. She then asked whetherthe pupil wanted to participate and said that he or she could stop atany point if they liked. AH pupils agreed, and none stopped beforecompletion of the study. Pupils were then given three practiceproblems and shown how they could check their answers bylooking under a flap. Scores on these problems served to assignpupils to high (correct on all), intermediate (correct on easy andintermediate problems), and low (correct on none or only on theeasy problem) levels of initial skill level.

Next, pupils were told that they would receive six moreproblems and could ask for help if they wanted. The experimenterexplained as follows:

You can ask for a hint, which will give you an idea about therule of the series, or you can ask me for directions how to

1Pupils agreed most with autonomous reasons, so when onelooks at patterns of agreement within rather than between groups,pupils did not always agree most with the class of reasons thatdefined the group to which they were assigned. Pupils assigned tothe autonomous group agreed most with autonomous reasons(M = 3.88, 2.49, and 1.99 for Autonomous, Ability-Focused, andExpedient scales, respectively), and pupils assigned to the ability-focused group agreed most with ability-focused reasons (M = 3.16,3.36, and 2.02, respectively). However, although by definition,pupils assigned to the expedient group scored above the samplemean on Expedient perceptions and below the sample mean onAutonomous and Ability-Focused scales, they agreed more withautonomous (M — 3.18) and ability-focused (M = 2.89) reasonsthan they did with expedient ones (M = 2.48).

636 BUTLER

compute the answer. Take, for example, the problem 12 3 5 8?If you asked for a hint, I would place this transparency overthe problem. It shows that the rule for this series is that eachnumber is the sum of the two before it [transparency showsthat 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 - 5, 3 + 5 = 8]. Then you can try towork out the next number. If you asked for directions, I woulduse this transparency. It shows that to get the right answer youmust add 5 to the last number [transparency shows "add 5"over the 8]. You can decide whether to ask for help, when toask for help, and whether to ask for a hint or for directions.

Presentation of hint and directions was counterbalanced.The experimenter asked what she would show if asked for a hint

and for directions, to ascertain that children understood thedifference between them. She reminded pupils that they couldcheck their answers but emphasized that they should do so onlyafter they had written their solution and should not copy the answereven after checking it. Children were then given the first problem.Hints and directions to compute the answer were standard (seeAppendix B). For hints, the transparency presented each of thealternating series with its progression rule in a different color. Fordirections, it presented only the last number with the relevantoperation written above it. Experimenters verbalized the rule ordirections but gave no further help. For each problem, theyunobtrusively recorded whether pupils asked for help; whether theyasked for a hint or directions; time that elapsed before each request;whether the answer was incorrect, correct, or correct after askingfor help; and whether the child copied the answer.

Finally, perceptions of help seeking were measured with aquestionnaire, which read as follows:

When we gave these problems to pupils in your grade inanother school, some asked for help when they could not solvea problem alone and others did not. Why do you think thatkids who asked for help did so?

Pupils rated the degree to which they agreed that each of ninereasons explained why children asked for help, on a scale of 1(definitely disagree) to 5 (definitely agree). Reasons reflectedautonomous perceptions of help seeking as promoting learning andmastery, ability-focused perceptions that pupils had low ability orwere embarrassed to fail, or expedient perceptions that helpseeking expedited easy task completion.

Results

Requests for help. Measures of help seeking consideredonly first requests, because few children made more than one

help request per problem (from 1 to 8 children for the sixproblems). In no cases did children who had solved aproblem correctly ask for help. Simply counting the numberof requests was not appropriate, because children differed inthe number of problems they solved alone. Thus, followingButler and Neuman (1995), three measures were con-structed: requests for help (number of problems for which achild requested help divided by number of problems notsolved alone), requests for hints (problems for which a childrequested a hint divided by problems not solved alone), andand requests for directions (problems for which a childrequested directions divided by problems not solved alone).Measures could range from 0 (child never asked for helpwhen he or she did not solve the problem) to 1 (always askedfor help when did not solve the problem). These measureswere analyzed with a 2 (help request: hint vs. directions) X 3(help-avoidance orientation: autonomous, ability focused, orexpedient) X 3 (perceived math competence) X 2 (sex)analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures onthe first factor. In this and subsequent analyses, significantinteraction effects were decomposed with tests for simpleeffects, using degrees of freedom and relevant mean squareerrors from the general analysis; where appropriate, Schef-fe's range test (p < .05) was used to compare means withina factor.

As predicted, perceptions of help avoidance affected boththe frequency and the nature of help requests. A between-subjects main effect for help-avoidance orientation, F(2,254) = 15.82, p < .001, was qualified by a within-subjectseffect for orientation by type of request, F(2, 254) = 16.60,p < .001, MSE = .13 (see Table 3 for cell means). Aspredicted, pupils with autonomous or expedient orientationsrequested significantly more help than did pupils with anability-focused orientation. Separate analyses for the effectsof orientation on each kind of help request confirmed thathelp orientation had significant, but different, effects onrequests for hints, F(2, 254) = 16.56, p < .001, anddirections, F(2, 254) = 6.82, p < .001, MSE = .13. Requestsfor hints were most frequent in the autonomous orientationgroup, and requests for directions were most frequent in theexpedient orientation group.

Table 3Mean Scores for Requests for Help, Latency to Help Request, Cheating, and Perceptionsof Help Seeking (HS) by Orientations to Help Avoidance, Study 2

Orientations to help avoidance

Variable

Requests for hintsRequests for directionsAll help requestsCheatingRequest latencyAutonomous perceptions of HSAbility-focused perceptions of HSExpedient perceptions of HS

n

Autonomous

M

0.720.090.810.34

63.623.812.972.40

SD

0.320.200.281.01

25.890.790.730.80

90

Ability focused

M

0.460.110.570.79

58.343.653.292.61

SD

0.350.220.351.05

24.890.800.980.80

95

Expedient

M

0.460.270.730.30

50.273.412.813.15

SD

0.380.300.280.09

23.440.770.930.76

87


Table 4Means for Help Requests and for Cheating byHelp-Avoidance (HA) Orientation and Sex, Study 2

Variable

Requests for helpMSD

CheatingMSD

n

AutonomousHA

Boys

0.760.31

0.270.79

44

Girls

0.860.24

0.411.18

46

Ability-focusedHA

Boys

0.430.33

1.221.18

46

Girls

0.710.30

0.350.35

49

ExpedientHA

Boys

0.710.32

0.381.05

45

Girls

0.750.25

0.210.72

42

As predicted, perceived competence did not moderatehelp seeking in any group. The prediction that girls wouldrequest more help, but not more executive help, wassupported. A significant main effect for sex on help seeking,F(l, 254) - 14.12, p < .001 (Ms = .77 for girls and .63 forboys), was not qualified by a significant interaction effectwith kind of requests. It was, however, qualified by anunexpected significant effect for the interaction of Help-Avoidance Orientation X Sex, F(2, 254) = 4.09, p < .05,MSE = .04 (see Table 4 for cell means). Although orienta-tion moderated help seeking among both boys F(2, 254) =36.57, p < .001, and girls, F(2, 254) = 6.05, p < .01, thetendency for girls to request more help than boys wassignificant only for pupils with an ability-focused orienta-tion, F(2, 254) = 45.19, p < .001, MSE = .04.

Cheating. The results confirmed that pupils who en-dorsed ability-focused reasons for help avoidance madefewest overt requests for help. I predicted also that thesechildren would be most likely to seek covert assistance, or,in the present context, to cheat. The measure of cheatingconsisted of the number of problems for which childrencopied the answer. A 3 (help-avoidance orientation) X 3(perceived competence) X 2 (sex) ANOVA yielded thepredicted main effects for orientation, F(2, 254) - 5.97, p <.01, and for sex, F(2,254) = 6.01, p < .01. The findings thatchildren with an ability-focused orientation cheated most(see Table 3) and that boys (M = 0.63) cheated more thangirls (M = 0.33) were, however, qualified by a significanteffect for the Help-Avoidance Orientation X Sex interaction,F(2, 254) = 4.99, p < .01, MSE = .83. Separate analyses forthe effect of sex within each help-avoidance orientation (seeTable 4 for cell means) were significant only for theability-focused group, F(2, 254) = 21.66, p < .001, MSE =.83. Thus, the prediction that cheating would be mostcommon among pupils with an ability-focused orientationwas supported for boys, but help-avoidance orientation didnot moderate cheating among girls.

Latency for requests for help. I predicted that childrenwho endorsed autonomous reasons for help avoidancewould spend longer trying to solve problems alone beforerequesting help than would those who endorsed expedientreasons. Request latency was computed as the mean timeover all problems for which help was requested that elapsed

before children made their first request for help. Data weremissing for 25 children who never requested help. A 3(help-avoidance orientation) X 3 (perceived competence) X2 (sex) ANOVA yielded a significant main effect forhelp-avoidance orientation F(2, 229) = 7.36, p < .001 (seeTable 3 for cell means). As predicted, pupils in the expedientorientation group asked for help significantly faster man didones in the autonomous and ability-focused groups.

Using hints to improve independent problem solving. Ithas been argued that asking for hints is adaptive because itpromotes understanding. I examined whether requestinghints for early problems led to increasing capacity to solvelater ones alone and hypothesized that this pattern would bereceived mainly among pupils who had endorsed autono-mous perceptions of help avoidance. Children were dividedinto frequent or infrequent hint requesters according to amedian split on requests for hints for the first three problems.Independent problem solving was analyzed with a 2 (time:Problems 1-3 solved alone vs. Problems 4—6 solved alone) X

3 (help-avoidance orientation) X 2 (frequency of requestsfor hints for early problems) X 3 (perceived competence) X2 (sex) ANOVA with repeated measures on the first factor.As expected, the effect for the Time X Help AvoidanceOrientation X Frequency of Hint Requests interaction wassignificant, F(2, 236) = 5.03, p < .01, MSE = .49. Separate2 (time: Problems 1-3 solved alone vs. Problems 4-6 solvedalone) X 2 (infrequent vs. frequent requests for hints forearly problems) ANOVAs conducted within each orientationyielded a significant interaction effect only for pupils whohad endorsed an autonomous orientation, F(2, 236) = 17.69,p < .001, MSE = .49. As predicted, pupils with anautonomous orientation who requested more hints for earlyproblems solved more later than earlier ones alone. Thenumber of independent solutions did not increase over timeamong pupils with an ability-focused or expedient orienta-tion, even if they asked for hints for early problems (seeTable 5 for cell means).

Help-avoidance orientation and help-seeking style. Theresults provided consistent support for my proposal thatdifferent orientations to classroom help avoidance would beassociated with different patterns of help seeking in an

Table 5Means for No. Early and Later Problems Solved Alone byHelp-Avoidance (HA) Orientation and Infrequent VersusFrequent Requests for Hints for Problems 1-3

Problemorder

Problems 1-3MSD

Problems 4-6MSD

n

AutonomousHA

Infreq

0.800.75

1.001.02

26

Freq

0.580.73

1.800.93

64

Ability-focusedHA

Infreq Freq

0.76 1.020.73 0.85

0.83 1.340.99 1.02

54 38

ExpedientHA

Infreq

0.570.70

0.821.01

52

Freq

1.210.84

1.500.99

33

Note. Infreq = infrequent; freq = frequent.

638 BUTLER

Table 6Frequencies of Help-Seeking Style by Help-Avoidance (HA) Orientation and Sex

Help-seekingstyle

AutonomousExecutiveAvoidant-cheating

n

Autonomous HA

Boys

816

1332

Girls

75196

32

Total

79139

Expedient HA

Boys

35471834

Girls

35541126

Total

355015

Ability-focused HA

Boys

189

7333

Girls

54271926

Total

341749

Note. All numbers in table except ns are percentages.

experimental setting. To further clarify these associations, Ioperationally defined the three styles of help seeking asfollows: autonomous (above the mean on requests for hints,below the mean on requests for directions, and above themean on response latency); executive (above the mean onrequests for directions, below the mean on requests for hints,and below the mean on response latency); and avoidant-covert (below the mean on requests for hints and directionsand above the mean on cheating). I examined the associationbetween perceptions and behavior among the 183 pupilswho exhibited one of these styles, using log-linear modeling withbackward elimination, starting with a 3 (help-seeking style) x 3(help-avoidance orientation) X 2 (sex) saturated model; apreliminary analysis retained no effects involving perceivedcompetence. The best fitting model, x2 (6, N = 183) = 7.97,p = .240, retained the second-order effects for Style XOrientation and Style X Sex, but the third-order effect forStyle X Orientation X Sex approached significance (p < . 10;see Table 6 for cell frequencies). As expected, the autono-mous style was displayed by a far higher proportion ofpupils who endorsed autonomous perceptions than of oneswho had endorsed executive or ability-focused perceptions.In contrast, the executive style was most common amongpupils in the expedient-orientation group, and the avoidant-covert style was most common among those in the ability-focused group. The association between help-seeking styleand gender also was illuminating. Similar proportions ofboys and girls engaged in autonomous and executive helpseeking, but more boys adopted the avoidant-covert style.Table 6 clarifies that help-seeking styles among pupils withautonomous and expedient orientations did not differ bygender. In contrast, the ability-focused orientation was

associated with autonomous or executive help seekingamong girls but with the avoidant-covert style among boys.

Reasons for help seeking. Reasons for help seekingwere measured to examine the proposal that pupils constructguiding orientations to help which incorporate differentperceptions both of reasons for avoiding help and of reasonsfor help seeking. I predicted first that responses to the nineitems of the reasons for help-seeking questionnaire alsowould yield three factors incorporating autonomous, ability-focused, and expedient reasons for help seeking, respec-tively. As predicted, principal-components analysis withoblique rotation yielded three factors with eigenvaluesgreater than 1 (see Table 7 for factors and loadings), whichaccounted for 61% of the variance. The three items in eachfactor were averaged to create Autonomous (a = .73),Ability-Focused (a = .68), and Expedient (a = .72) scales,r(272) = .10, ns between autonomous and ability-focusedperceptions; r(272) = - .23 ,p < .001, between autonomousand expedient perceptions; and r{212) = .16, p < .01,between ability-focused and expedient perceptions. Thesecond prediction, that perceived reasons for help seekingwould differ by orientations to help avoidance in theclassroom, was examined using a 3 (perceptions of helpseeking) X 3 (help-avoidance orientations) X 3 (perceivedcompetence) X 2 (sex) MANOVA, with the first as awithin-subjects factor. The analysis yielded only the pre-dicted significant multivariate main effect for perceptions ofhelp avoidance, F(6, 504) = 3.23, p < .05. Effects at theunivariate level were significant for ability-focused, F(2,253) = 3.78, p < .05, and expedient, F(2, 253) = 4.71,p <.01, perceptions of help seeking. Table 3 confirms thatagreement with ability-focused reasons for help seeking was

Table 7Factor Loadings for Reasons for Help Seeking in the Experimental Session, Study 2

Factor

Item Expedient Ability-focused Autonomous

Wanted to finish quicklyDidn't feel like exerting themselvesIt's easier to ask for helpThey're no good at mathThey wanted to get the best gradeIt's embarrassing to get it wrongWanted to understand math seriesWere curious about rules of the seriesWanted to understand how to solve next problems

.80

.83

.70.74.71.74

.80

.80

.76


highest among pupils with an ability-focused orientation toclassroom help avoidance and agreement with expedientreasons for help seeking was highest among those who hadendorsed an expedient one. The tendency for pupils with anautonomous orientation to help avoidance to agree mostwith autonomous reasons for help seeking was not signifi-cant, because agreement with this scale was quite high in allcells.2

Supplementary analyses: Effects of initial skill level.Some studies of help seeking tapped actual, rather thanperceived, competence, so I assigned children to high,intermediate, or low levels of initial skill level, according totheir scores on the three practice problems and reconductedthe analyses for help seeking, latency, and cheating reportedabove, using initial skill level instead of perceived compe-tence. In the interests of brevity, I report only significanteffects involving initial skill level. A 2 (help request: hint vs.directions) X 3 (help-avoidance orientation) X 3 (initialskill level) X 2 (sex) ANOVA with repeated measures on thefirst factor yielded a significant within-subjects effect for theInitial Skill Level X Help Request, interaction, F(2, 254) =8.90, p < .001, MSE = .13. Separate analyses for the effectof initial ability on each kind of help request were significantonly for requests for hints, F{2, 254) = 6.62, p < .001.Children of low initial skill level asked for significantlyfewer hints (M = .45) than did children at intermediate(M = 0.60) or high (M = 0.63) levels. The analysis forlatency yielded a significant main effect for initial ability,F(2, 229) = 5.09, p < .01. Pupils who scored worst on thepractice problems requested help significantly faster than didchildren who did best (Ms = 52.9, 57.4, 64.0 s for low,intermediate, and high levels, respectively). There were nosignificant effects of initial skill level on cheating.

General Discussion

The main contributions of these studies lies in firstdelineating three dimensions of reasons for pupils' reluc-tance to seek help and three distinct styles of help seekingand then demonstrating that different orientations to helpavoidance are indeed associated with different styles of helpseeking. My proposal that pupils construct distinct guidingorientations to help was supported by the finding thatattributions for both help avoidance and help seeking loadedon three distinct and barely correlated factors, reflectingautonomous, ability-focused, and expedient perceptions,respectively. In addition, although autonomous reasons forhelp seeking were highly endorsed by most pupils, agree-ment with ability-focused reasons was highest among pupilswho had endorsed ability-focused reasons for classroomhelp avoidance, and agreement with expedient reasons forhelp seeking was highest among pupils who had endorsedexpedient reasons for classroom help avoidance. This evi-dence for the proposed three-dimensional structure of help-related perceptions is important in itself. Prior conceptualiza-tions of the help-seeking dilemma (Nadler, 1997; Newman,1991) in terms of perceived benefits versus costs of helpseeking have not considered the possibility that differentpupils may construct qualitatively different perceptions of

the costs of requesting help, which may then promote quitedifferent patterns of behavior when they encounter difficulty.Indeed, the second main contribution of the present studieslies in confirming that this is indeed the case.

The measures of Study 2 were designed to capture mythreefold distinction between autonomous, expedient, andavoidant-covert help-seeking styles and thus differed insome respects from those used in prior studies of helpseeking. Comparisons of instrumental versus executiverequests for help (e.g., Nelson Le Gall, 1987; Newman &Schwager, 1995) tend to address both the nature of requests(hints vs. solutions) and the necessity of help requests(whether or not pupils experienced genuine difficulty beforerequesting help). Here, too, the central measures of helpseeking were the frequency with which pupils who did notsolve a problem alone requested hints, on the one hand, anddirections to compute the answer, on the other. Pupils inStudy 2 were not required to record a solution beforerequesting help, so I could not measure necessity in terms ofthe frequency of help requests that followed incorrectsolutions (e.g., Newman & Schwager, 1995). Instead, Imeasured the latency of requests for help, on the assumptionthat this would contribute to distinguishing between autono-mous help seeking, when pupils request help after experienc-ing real difficulty, and executive help-seeking, when re-quests precede genuine attempts at solution. Finally, Ireasoned that to be considered autonomous, requests forhints should actually be applied to solving subsequentproblems. Thus, I also analyzed the degree to which suchrequests were indeed associated with increases in the rate ofindependent solutions during the session. No studies haveexamined avoidant-covert help seeking, which was capturedhere by considering both help avoidance (low frequency ofrequests for help) and covert help seeking (copying theanswer).

As predicted, different orientations to help avoidance inthe classroom were associated with different patterns ofbehavior when children encountered difficulty with mathproblems. Pupils identified as endorsing an autonomousorientation were most likely to engage in autonomous helpseeking. They spent longer than other groups working on theproblem alone, asked for help if they could not solve it, andalmost always asked for hints rather than directions. Incontrast, pupils with an expedient orientation to help avoid-ance displayed an executive (Nelson-Le Gall, 1985), didac-tic (Asser, 1978), or dependent (Nadler, 1997) style of helpseeking. They spent little time trying to solve problems ontheir own and also were more likely than any other group toask for directions. Although these pupils, too, asked moreoften for hints than for directions, they did not use the hints

2Because perceptions of reasons for help seeking might havebeen affected by pupil's own willingness to seek help during theexperiment, data also were analyzed with a 3 (perceptions of helpseeking) X 3 (perceptions of help avoidance) X 2 (sex) multivari-ant analysis of covariance, with the measure of necessary helpseeking as the covariate. The effect for the covariate was notsignificant, and the main effect for perceptions of help avoidanceparalleled that reported in the text.

640 BUTLER

to improve subsequent independent problem solving. It isoften assumed that requests for hints in themselves reflectstrivings to attain independent mastery (Nelson-Le Gall,1985; Newman & Schwager, 1995). However, I found thatonly pupils with an autonomous orientation to help avoid-ance actually used the hints received to develop understand-ing that enabled them to solve later problems alone. Thesefindings further underline the importance of attending notonly to the frequency and nature of help requests but also tothe use people make of them. Thus, some pupils who requesthints may use them, as our expedient ones seemed to do, toexpedite task completion rather than to promote understand-ing and mastery.

For pupils who construe help in terms of the probabilitythat it will expedite easy task completion, seeking executivehelp quickly in settings where it is available can be viewedas an active and even effective way of achieving their goals.In a similar vein, I expected pupils who construed helpavoidance in terms of masking inadequate ability to resolvethe dilemma between exposing inadequacy by requestinghelp and exposing inadequacy by failing by refraining fromrequesting overt help and by copying the correct answerinstead. As predicted, pupils who had endorsed ability-focused reasons for help avoidance in math class were mostlikely to adopt such an avoidant-covert style. They alsowere most likely to attribute help seeking in another pupil tolow ability or to concerns with exposing inadequacy byfailing. There is prior evidence that people who are con-cerned with demonstrating high ability are reluctant to askfor help (Butler & Neuman, 1995; Nadler, 1987). However,studies that have measured frequency of help seeking aloneshed more light on what such people do not do when theycontinue to encounter difficulty than on what they do. Onepossibility suggested by the present findings is that they willseek covert help. In a similar vein, Frey and Ruble (1985)found that once children become aware of the self-esteemcosts of social comparison, overt social comparison in theclassroom is replaced by more subtle and covert forms, suchas inquiring about peer progress. It would be interesting toexamine in future research both the forms of covert helpseeking in the classroom, which may range from askingother pupils what answer they got, through copying theanswer, to the more blatant forms of cheating reported byNewstead et al. (1996), and the degree to which these arepredicted by pupils' help-related perceptions.

Taken together, the results provided compelling supportfor the proposal that differences in the way pupils construehelp avoidance in the classroom will be associated withqualitative differences in help-seeking behaviors in anothercontext. The predicted relations between ability-focusedperceptions and avoidant-cheating behaviors were, how-ever, supported in their entirely only for boys. Although anability-focused orientation undermined overt help seeking inboth boys and girls, when objective difficulty with the taskwas combined with "psychological" difficulty with expos-ing incompetence, more girls responded by asking for help,and more boys responded not only by underusing help butalso by trying to succeed by "illicit" means. A recent surveyalso found higher rates of cheating among males (Newstead

et al., 1996). Both participants and observers have higherexpectations for success for males than for females and aremore likely to attribute failure to low ability for females andto insufficient effort for males, especially in sex-typeddomains such as math (e.g., Deaux, 1976; Eccles, Wigfield,Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993; Roberts, 1991). Teachers alsoare more willing to help when pupil failure is attributed tolow ability (Butler, 1994) and may thus respond morefavorably to requests for help when girls experience aca-demic difficulty. In contrast, boys may experience greaterexternal pressure to demonstrate high ability by succeedingwithout help and thus may be more likely than girls to seekcovert or illicit help.

The implication that societal expectations concerningability may be crucial in mediating academic help seeking inmales and females seems reasonable, but note that I found nosex differences in help seeking among pupils who endorsedexpedient or autonomous perceptions of help avoidance. Overall,girls were no more likely than boys to engage in executive helpseeking (Nelson-Le Gall, 1985), a behavioral pattern similarto that which Nadler (1997) terms dependent overutilizationof help. Although this finding is consistent with proposalsthat females' greater willingness to ask for help reflectsactive social coping rather than passive dependency (Green-glass, 1993; Nadler, 1997), in the present study, girls werealso no more likely than boys to engage in autonomous helpseeking. Rather, the degree to which pupils displayed autono-mous versus executive help-seeking behaviors depended not ongender, but on the degree to which pupils endorsed eitherautonomous or expedient perceptions. The findings thusimply that boys may be more willing to seek help than iscommonly thought, as long as they do not perceive helpseeking as threatening to their perceptions of competence.

The role of help-related perceptions in shaping behaviorwas further supported by the findings that help seeking wasmoderated by endorsement of ability-focused perceptions ofhelp avoidance, but not by perceived competence. There issome agreement that the critical variable mediating therelation between competence and help seeking is perceivedthreat to self-esteem, but I know of no studies that measuredperceived threat independently of perceived competence.My proposal that ability-focused perceptions of help avoid-ance may provide such a measure was supported by thefinding that at all levels of perceived competence, pupilswho endorsed an ability-focused orientation were leastlikely to request help. Interpretation of the lack of relationbetween perceived competence and help seeking to similarand high levels of perceived threat among pupils in theability-focused group and to similar and low levels ofperceived threat among pupils in the autonomous andexpedient perception groups is further supported by thefinding that pupils with an ability-focused orientation to helpavoidance were most likely to cheat and to agree that pupilswho seek help do so because they lack ability or areembarrassed to fail. Thus, these pupils' reluctance to seekhelp seems quite clearly to reflect a defensive attempt tomask inadequate ability rather than indifference to successor a commitment to working alone.

My findings imply first that researchers may have mea-


sured the wrong variable: perceived competence rather thanperceived threat to competence. If so, prior mixed findingsas to the relation between competence and help seeking inachievement settings may have been due to variations acrossstudies and contexts in the degree to which perceived threatwas greater at higher or lower levels of perceived compe-tence. The positive correlation in Study 1 between endorse-ment of ability-focused perceptions and perceived compe-tence supports the consistency hypothesis (Tessler &Schwartz, 1972), which proposes that the need for help willbe most threatening when it conflicts with generally favor-able self-perceptions. Further research is, however, neces-sary, both to establish that perceived threat does indeedpredict help seeking better than does perceived competenceor self-esteem and to investigate whether the relationbetween perceived threat and perceived competence differsin different contexts.

Conflicting findings as to the relation between compe-tence and willingness to seek help also may have been due todifferences in the measures of competence used, so I alsomeasured initial skill level. Relative to pupils who scoredhigh on the practice problems, the least able pupils requestedhelp faster and requested fewer hints. These differences aresimilar to those that emerged in comparisons between olderand younger children (Butler & Neuman, 1995; Nelson-LeGall, Kratzer, Jones, & DeCooke, 1990; Newman & Schwa-ger, 1995) and are consistent with proposals that greaterknowledge or expertise enables more sophisticated help andinformation seeking (Miyake & Norman, 1979). Thus,although initial skill level affected help seeking more thandid perceived competence, it affected the quality of helpseeking rather than willingness to seek help. It is, however,likely that in the classroom these aspects are related. Ifpoorer understanding of the subject matter is associated withless proficiency in eliciting usefiil help from one's surround-ings, over time, less able students may request less help thanmore able ones (Karabenick & Knapp, 1988, 1991; New-man, 1990) because their attempts at help seeking are lesseffective and satisfying. Moreover, our experimenters re-sponded positively to all help requests, but teachers mayrespond more favorably to the more sophisticated requestsof more able pupils.

Although perceptions and behaviors were tapped in twodifferent contexts, several months apart, and perceptions forboth help avoidance in the classroom and help seeking in theexperimental setting were tapped for others, rather than theself, relations between perceptions and behaviors wereremarkably consistent. In this case, it is important to inquireinto possible determinants of pupils' help-related percep-tions. The distinction between autonomous, ability-focused,and expedient orientations to help avoidance is conceptuallysimilar to distinctions in the achievement motivation litera-ture among task, ego, and extrinsic orientations to learning(e.g., Nicholls, 1983; Ryan & Pintrich, 1997). A researchprogram is currently examining the proposal that task, ego,and extrinsic orientations to learning will promote autono-mous, ability-focused and expedient orientations to helpavoidance and help seeking, respectively, and that orienta-tions to learning and help will together predict the degree to

which pupils engage in autonomous, avoidant-covert, orexecutive help seeking. No prior studies have systematicallydistinguished between the different orientations to helpseeking and help avoidance and the different styles of helpseeking identified here. Some support for the previously men-tioned conceptualization is provided by Ryan and Pintrich(1997), who reported positive associations among taskorientation, perceived benefits of help seeking for learning(analogous to autonomous reasons for help seeking), andself-reported use of help seeking to promote mastery (analo-gous to autonomous help seeking). In addition, Butler andNeuman (1995) found that experimental induction of egoorientation undermined willingness to seek help and en-hanced attributions of help avoidance to ability-focused con-cerns, relative to a condition that induced task orientation.

Although the present studies focused on personal determi-nants of help seeking, help seeking is a social behavior thatis shaped by people's experiences in particular contexts.Thus, it seems likely that different classroom environmentsmay promote different help-related perceptions and patternsof help seeking. One must exercise caution in generatingeducational recommendations from the present studies,which did not consider contextual factors. One suggestionmay be to promote autonomous perceptions of help seeking,but my findings suggest that such perceptions may alreadybe normative (see Newman, 1990; van der Meij, 1988, forsimilar findings from other countries). Thus, it may be morefruitful for teachers to attenuate competing ability-focusedor expedient perceptions of help than to reinforce alreadystrong autonomous ones. This proposal receives somesupport from a study that found that adaptive strategy useamong pupils who scored high on mastery achievementgoals depended on whether they also scored high or low onego goals (Meece & Holt, 1993). My findings also suggestthat deemphasizing ability-focused perceptions may beespecially helpful in promoting constructive help seekingand reducing cheating among boys.

Perhaps more significantly, I observed help seeking in acontext where pupils could request different kinds of helpand received help immediately and without censure. Notsurprisingly, the rates of help seeking reported here were farhigher than those reported for classroom activities (Karaben-ick & Knapp, 1988, 1991; Newman & Goldin, 1990).Teachers do not always approve of requests for help, andeven if they do, the large classes and frontal recitationteaching methods typical of the Israeli educational systemlimit their capacity to provide children with individual andconstructive help. Moreover, teachers may not always knowwhat constitutes constructive help. Thus, in another study(Butler, 1994), I found that few teachers thought it appropri-ate to respond to incorrect answers by helping pupilsunderstand and overcome their difficulty. This article did notfocus on the cognitive implications of different kinds ofhelp, but the effects of hints on problem solving were quitedramatic. When pupils requested hints and were motivatedto attain understanding, even some pupils who could notsolve the relatively simple practice problems were later ableto solve far more complex problems on their own. Thus, it

642 BUTLER

seems likely that offering help that draws attention toprinciples and strategies and encouraging pupils to requestsuch help when they need it will help to allay fears that helpseeking will be construed as incompetence and to reducetemptations to seek covert or executive help instead of helpthat can promote learning.

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Butler, R., & Neuman, O. (1995). Effects of task and egoachievement goals on help-seeking behaviors and attitudes.Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 261-271.

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Appendix A

Items and Factor Loadings for Entire "Reasons for Not Requesting Help in Math Class" Questionnaire, Study 1

Factor

Item

Don't want friends to see they are having difficulty3

Don't want everyone to look at thema

Don't want teacher to see they don't understand8

They are embarrassed8

They don't want to look stupida

They're afraid other kids will laugh at themWant to overcome difficulty by themselves3

Think that if they try they will work it out by themselves3

Think most important thing is to use their heada

Will feel good if they work it out alonea

Want to try to work out the problem by themselvesa

Enjoy it more if they do it alone3

They are too involved in the problem to ask for helpThink it's more important to think than to get the answerThink teacher won't tell them the answer*Think their answer won't count if they get helpa

Think explanation will take so long they won't finish3

Think teacher doesn't like them to ask for helpa

Think that it will take them even longer to finisha

Think that what teacher says won't help them get the answer3

They don't have the time to ask for helpaItems retained to form scales of Ability-Focused, Autonomous, and Expedient perceptions of help avoidance.

Appendix B

Numerical Series Problems, Rules for Solution, and Examples of Help, Study 2Practice problems

Ability-focused

.76

.73

.83

.83

.84

.57-.11

.16

.11

.03- .06

.10

.10

.04

.07

.18

.30

.21

.24

.17

.10

Autonomous

- .08.08.10.07.07.06.68.67.71.74.75.74.35.47.06.12.18

- .01.07.10.35

Expedient

- .13- .29

.22

.20

.28

.44-.17

.12

.21

.06

.02.07.44.10.63.57.62.63.61.61.44

35 8 12? ( + 2 , + 3 , . . . )

17 105 2 ? ( - 7 , - 5 , . . . )

Experimental problems

1 4 3 12 9 36 ? (X3 for each series)8 12 4 6 2 3? (+2 for each series)1 9 4 6 7 3 ? (+3 for Series 1, - 3 for Series 2)10 10 7 6 4 2 ? ( - 3 for Series 1, - 4 for Series 2)20 27 14 9 8 3 ? ( -6 for Series 1, - 3 for Series 2)

18 16 17 14 15 11 ? ( - l , - 2 , etc. for Series 1, - 2 , - 3 , etc. for Series 2)

Example of hint (Problem 1)

1 X 3 3 X 3 ?1 4 3 12 9 36 ?

4 X 3 12X3

Example of directions for computing the answer (Problem 1)

- 9

36 ?

Received August 7, 1997Revision received May 10, 1998

Accepted May 11,1998

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