Tomás García Calvo

Using self-determination theory to explain sport persistence and dropout in adolescent athletes.

Motivational characteristics are influential in shaping adolescents desire to persist in sport or to discontinue their sport participation. Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) was utilized as the theoretical framework for this study. This theory examines whether sustained participatory involvement, defined as continued participation in the sport through the next year, was influenced by individuals self-determined motivation and by the fulfillment of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Four hundred ninety two soccer players between the ages of 13 and 17 years comprised the sample. Results indicated sport dropout was explained by higher levels of amotivation, external regulation, and introjected regulation and by lower satisfaction of relatedness and autonomy needs. The findings of this study contribute to the knowledge base on sport dropout as they supported many of self-determination theory.

Young Tennis Players’ Competitive Task Involvement and Performance: The Role of Goal Orientations, Contextual Motivational Climate, And Coach-Initiated Motivational Climate

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of situational and dispositional factors in contributing to competitive task involvement and performance in young tennis players. One hundred fifty-one adolescent tennis players and their coaches participated in the study. Participants responded to instruments measuring pre-game dispositional goal orientations and perceptions of the motivational climate and post-game task involvement in the competition by assessing concentration, loss of self-consciousness, and autotelic experience, perceptions of coach-initiated motivational climate in competition, and self-evaluation of game performance. In addition, coaches evaluated the players’ performance. Results showed that task involvement was predicted by players’ perceptions of a coach-initiated learning motivational climate in competition. Loss of self-consciousness was predicted by the players’ perceptions of a coach-initiated performance climate in competition. Finally, coaches’ and players’ assessment of performance were predicted by autotelic experience, concentration, and by perception of coach-initiated learning and performance orientation in competition.

A Structural Model of Goal Orientation in Sports: Personal and Contextual Variables

The following paper first introduces, and then goes on to test a structural model for goal orientation in sports that involves both personal and contextual variables. 511 subjects participated in this study, male and female athletes who play a variety of sports (352 men and 159 women). They ranged in age from 16 to 45-years old and completed the TEOSQ (Balaguer, Tomas & Castillos version, 1995), the POSQ (Treasure & Roberts, 1994), the PMCSQ-II (Newton & Duda, 1993), the Beliefs about the Causes of Success in Sports Questionnaire, and the Participation Motivation Inventory (Gill, Goss & Huddleston, 1983). The results of this sample show that success attribution and motivational climate are involved in determining goal orientation in sports. However, the model does present certain differences according to the type of sport practiced (individual versus team sport).

Influencia de una aplicación de telefonía móvil de entrenamiento sobre las necesidades psicológicas y la motivación autodeterminada en escolares

About the theoretical base of the Autodetermination Theory, the present research has tried to analyse the effect of the mobile applications which are related to the control of training about the basic psychological needs, the level of self-determination towards sport practice and fun. In order to do that, a quasi-experimental research was carried out in which 54 students (M = 16.4; SD = 1.51), both male and female, of different state schools of secondary education of Extremadura. The subjects of the expe - rimental group (n=27) developed a programme of intervention of autono- mous training of aerobic kind which was recorded and controlled with the mobile application Endomondo Sport Tracker, with an eight- week dura- tion. The components of the group of experimental control (n=27) recorded the same programme of autonomous training in a record sheet provided by the research group. The results showed that the satisfaction of the need for competence, the self-determination towards the fulfillment of the activity and the fun when carrying it out were higher in those students who used the application in regard to those who did not. In spite of that, no meanin- gful differences were noticed in most of the variables analyzed in the study,

La influencia del entorno próximo sobre la persistencia en la práctica de actividad físico-deportiva

El objetivo del presente estudio es conocer la importancia que adquieren los otros significativos, padres, entrenador y companeros, sobre la persistencia o cese de la practica deportiva en jovenes estudiantes. La muestra esta formada por 958 jovenes participantes de deportes colectivos, con edades comprendidas entre los 11 y 16 anos, pertenecientes a la Comunidad Autonoma de Extremadura. Se emplearon instrumentos para valorar la implicacion de los padres en la practica deportiva, asi como el clima motivacional de companeros y entrenador. Los resultados nos muestran una capacidad predictiva de la implicacion al club de los padres y el apoyo sobre la continuidad en el deporte, asi como el clima de la tarea por el entrenador. Finalmente se discuten los resultados y se muestran limitaciones y prospectivas de futuro.