european college of sport science

OP-PS03 Psychology 3
Results: Intra-class coefficients, the percentage of participants with differences that were within ±1 range of the mean test scores (proportion
of agreement test), repeated measures MANOVA, and paired sample t-test scores showed that players’ goal orientations changed
marginally from year-to-year and across a period of 4 years (p>.05).
Discussion: In order to persevere in a highly competitive environment, talented athletes require high levels of both task and ego orientation
(Van Yperen and Duda, 1999). The results in the present study confirm relatively high scores on task as well as ego orientation for
both male and female talented field hockey players, with task orientation scores comparable to other studies and ego orientation scores
higher (Duda and Whitehead, 1998). The results also show that motivational orientations appear to be highly stable over a 4-year period
and independent of one’s relative skill or physical maturity. An implication of these findings is that one measure of an athlete’s goal
orientations during adolescence appears to be sufficient. Whether these results are specific for Dutch field hockey players or whether they
can be generalized to other populations of adolescent talented athletes has to be investigated. The results are unique because this is one
of the first studies to apply a longitudinal design examining the stability of talented adolescent athletes’ goal orientations over a period of
four years.
Duda JL (1992). Motivation in sport and exercise, 57-91. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Duda JL, Nicholls JG (1992). Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 1-10.
Duda JL, Whitehead J (1998). Advances in sport and exercise psychology measurement, 21-48. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information
Technology.
Elferink-Gemser MT et al (2007). Journal of Sports Sciences, 25, 481-489.
Elferink-Gemser, MT et al. (2006). British Journal of Sports Medicine 40, 340-345.
Van Yperen NW, Duda JL (1999). Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 9, 358-364.
MOTIVATION AND GOALKEEPING: COPING WITH MEDIA REPORTING OF SAVES AND FAILURES
KRISTIANSEN, E., ROBERTS, G.C.
NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF SPORT SCIENCES
Introduction: As a part of a larger study investigating media reporting as a stressor for elite athletes, this study investigated the experience
of professional football goalkeepers when coping with media reports on their performance. The sport media typically presents
sporting images by exaggerating the spectacular, inventing and focusing on rivalries, and manufacturing reasons why we should pay
attention to different sports events. The media tells the story the way those who benefit from cultural commitments to competition, productivity,
and material success. One popular theme is the success theme, but lurking behind every success story is someone else’s failure.
Within the football environment, goalkeeping failures often become the media reason why one team wins and another loses. The
media does not cover learning, progress, or enjoyment (mastery motivation), rather they cover winning, great individual performance,
and success and failure. In motivational terms, the media is attracted to ego involving criteria, where players are compared and lionised
if successful, or demonised if they fail. From research, we know that to keep people motivated and performing optimally, we need to be
mastery involved and concentrate on one’s own performance and successes (e.g., Roberts, 2001). However, the media only looks ego
involving criteria of what is success and failure. How do the goalkeepers relate to these conflicting views of what is success and failure in
their role as an elite athlete?
Methods: We used qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in 2008. Participants were 3 goalkeepers in the Norwegian
elite division. The goalkeepers were all asked about the goalkeeper’s importance on the team and the framing of goalkeepers in the
news media. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded with main categories and associated sub-categories before analysis.
Results and Discussion: The goalkeepers considered the news media to overestimate the importance football players should place on
the game, and disagreed with the framing of matches in the media. As a result, they used many different coping strategies to cope with
what they considered to be the interfering media attention. Avoidance of the media representatives and of reading what was written was
a coping strategy frequently mentioned. All three goalkeepers claimed that they did not have the faintest idea what the media wrote
about them. In addition, they had also instructed family and friends not to tell them, especially before games. Instead, they tried to focus
on their tasks in the game and rely on their own/or the coach’s evaluation of it later (mastery motivation involvement with vigilance coping).
The goalkeepers understood why the media was interested in them, but they disagreed with the framing of their performances in
order to sell newspapers.
References
Roberts, G.C. (2001). Advances in motivation in sport and exercise. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
GOAL ORIENTATION, MOTIVATIONAL CLIMATE, BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS AND PERCEIVED COMPETENCE
AMONG YOUNG ELITE CROSS-COUNTRY SKIERS: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY
NILSEN, D.A., LEMYRE, N., HEGGEBØ, F., PENSGAARD, A.M.
NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF SPORT SCIENCES
In recent years, a major framework for understanding motivation in sport and physical activity contexts stems from achievement goal
theory (Nicholls, 1989) and self- determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). This research has found a relationship between motivational
climate and goal orientation and basic psychological needs and self- determined motivation. This research has also confirmed the
relationship between perceived self referenced competence and task orientation and self- determined motivation. Even though it has
been a widely support for these relationships is it more unclear how perceived normative competence will influence both ego orientation
and self- determined motivation in a sport context. Since the major part of the research has included samples where different kind of
groups has been measured (e.g. team sports), and very few demonstrates the changes over time with a longitudinal design, is it also
unclear how motivation variables will change over time for competitors in individual sports.
The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between perceived motivational climate, achievement goal orientations, basic
psychological needs and perceived competence in a longitudinal study. The participants were 38 young elite cross-country skiers between
17 and 23 years old. Inclusion criteria were that all had to compete at a high level, and they had to represent the same sport,
cross-country skiing. The participants were asked to respond on a two-part questionnaire. The first part requested demographic information
including gender, age, sport specific age, perceived sport level and totally numbers of training hours present season. The second
part were formed to measure motivational variables such as goal orientation (POSQ), motivational climate (PMCSQ), situational motivation
(SIMS), basic psychological needs (BPNES) and perceived competence (PCS). Data were collected five times; pre- season, three times
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