Sport motivation – a comparasion between adult football players competing in professional and Amateur levels

RESUMEN PÓSTER

Competitive environments are likely to promote a focus on winning, promote ego involvement and subsequently a decrease in intrinsic motivation through its adverse effect on selfdetermination. There has been little research that investigated the differences in motivation as function the competitive level and the research to date has yielded equivocal findings. The purpose of this study was to compare the achievement goal, self-determination and beliefs about the nature and determinants of sportive competence in function of competitive level in 2 groups of adult football players: Professionals (n=105) and Amateurs (n=78). Participants completed the following tools: Task and Ego Orientation in Sports Questionnaire (TEOSQ); Self- Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ); Questionnaire relative to Beliefs about the Nature and Determinants of Sports Competency (QCNHS). There were no significant differences in motivational orientations as a function of a competitive level. Amateur players, when compared with Professionals, presented significantly higher levels of amotivation and strongly believed that their sports competence was stable; nevertheless, they reported lower levels of identified regulation. On the other hand, Professionals when compared with Amateurs revealed significantly higher levels of introjected regulation and strongly believed that their competence for the practice of football was due to learning and able to be improved. The differences found concerning the several motivation determinants in function of the competitive level, underline the existence of a complex relation between the competitive level and motivation. If the indicated differences concerning the several motivational determinants reflect specific characteristics of the football players with more success, it becomes important to ascertain which athletes intend to reach a higher step of performance, so that more developmental programs of intervention are applied on the basis of this specificity.