Goal orientation and participation motivation in tennis young players

Abstract

Motivation is during the last decades at the center of scientific interest both in physical education and sport. The purpose of the study was to assess the construct validity, the reliability and the correlation between factors of the Participation Motivation Questionnaire (PMQ) of Gill, Gross & Huddleston (1983) as adapted for Greek populations by Patsiaouras et. al. (2004) and the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) of Duda (1989). The sample consisted of 300 children (198 boys and 102 girls) with ages ranging from 8 to 17 (M=11.7±2.43), and an average of (M=2,9±1.13) years of practicing tennis. Exploratory factor analysis applied for PMQ identified five factors explaining the 48.09% of the total variance, that is, «social participation and energy release» (α=,825), «status achievement» (α=,798), «skill improvement» (a=,666), «challenge» (α=,639) and «personal motives» (α=,616). As for TEOSQ, two factors emerged explaining the 52,90 % of the total variance concerning task orientation (α=81) and ego orientation (α=.83). Correlation analysis (Pearson's r) revealed a positive relation between task orientation and intrinsic motives such as skill development (r=.570, p<0.01), while ego orientation was positively correlated with extrinsic motives such as "status achievement" (r=.514, p<0.01). Our results show that motives could possibly be reinforced via the promotion of task and ego orientation. © JPES.