This study examined the relationship of ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), age, and self-perceived academic achievement to students' academic motivational orientations. Groups of 333 American students in Wisconsin and 375 Chinese students in Hong Kong in grades 8, 10, and 12 completed questionnaires that gathered demographic information and assessed students' perceived academic achievement and factors related to their academic motivational orientations. Results indicated that American students were more likely than Chinese students to consider good grades a measure of success, while Chinese students were more likely than American students to consider behaving well as a measure of success. American students were more likely than Chinese students to rank grades as most important among measures of feedback. As they grew older, American students blamed teachers more, and Chinese students less, for their poor school performance. American students with low perceptions of their academic achievement had less preference for feedback based on comparison with fellow students than did students with high perceptions of academic achievement; the reverse was true for Chinese students. Females from both cultures considered success as more internal and controllable than did male students. American and Chinese students from high-SES homes perceived themselves as having higher academic achievement than did students from low-SES homes. Older students in both cultures were more task oriented than younger students, and students who perceived themselves as high achievers attributed greater importance to their own abilities than did students who perceived themselves as low achievers. (Contains 43 references.) (TJQ)