Goal orientation profile differences on self-determination and beliefs about the nature and determinants of sport competence sport motivation – a comparasion between adult football players competing in professional and amateur levels

RESUMEN PÓSTER

According to the goal-orientation literature, task and ego orientations are orthogonal constructs. Given that task and ego orientations have different cognitive and motivational implications; their combined impact (i.e., goal profile) might be different than the independent effect of being classified as task or ego dominant. To date, there are a reduced number of studies that examined the motivation by this perspective and the researchers suggest that a series of investigation is needed to determinate whether similar goal-orientation profiles can be identified in different samples of sport participants. The purpose of this study was to identify differences between goal profile groups on self-determination and beliefs about the natures and determinants of sport competence. The participants were 577 male football players. Ages ranges from 15 to 39 years (M= 21.71, SD=5.65). 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). Our results suggest that the more positive profiles are the High-Task/Low-Ego; High-Task/High-Ego groups, because they were the most self-determinated in their behaviour. On other hand, the fact they belief most than another groups that they competence for playing football is result to the learning and is subject to improvement, is a positive and desirable tendency, because these players had a higher perception of control on the development of their competence. The Low-Task/High-Ego group had a significantly lowers scores than did another three groups in RAI and in the belief that the sport competence is stable. The implications from our findings is that the Low-Task/High-Ego group may be most at risk for dropping out of the football practicing.

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 self-determination. 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.