Copj,right 0 Munksgaard 1998

Scand J Med Sci Sports 1998: 8: 120-124 Printed in Denmark . All rights reserved

Scandinavian Journal of M E D I C I N E & SCIENCE I N SPORTS ISSN 0905-7188

The relationship between achevement goal profile groups and perceptions of motivational climates in sport Ntoumanis N, Biddle S. The relationship between achievement goal profile groups and perceptions of motivational climates in sport. Scand J Med Sci Sports 1998: 8: 120-124. 0 Munksgaard, 1998 The purpose of the present study was to expand on previous research that has found compatibility between individuals’ views on achievement and the type of achievement that was promoted in the sport environment they belonged to. However, this line of research has ignored the fact that the two main goal orientations are largely independent and that their impact in combination is often different from their effects examined separately. The present study, therefore, examined which combinations of goal orientations are compatible with perceptions of mastery and performance climates in a sample of 146 British university students. With regard to mastery climate, the analysis showed that the critical factor was the degree of task orientation since those with high scores in this factor (irrespective of the degree of their ego orientation) perceived the climate as more mastery-oriented than those with low scores in task orientation. This was substantiated by the large differences in effect sizes between the high- and low-task groups. As far as performance climate was concerned, the most negative perceptions of climate were held by those who were rated both low in task orientation and high in ego orientation. A general inference from these results is that high task orientation is motivationally adaptive, whereas high ego orientation is not motivationally detrimental as long as it is accompanied by a high task orientation. These findings are in contrast with previous suggestions that have called for the enhancement of task orientation with the concurrent suppression of ego orientation. Our results are, however, consonant with studies which have employed a goal profiles analysis in sport and in physical education, and with empirical evidence from real sport settings.

The study of motivation has been a major focus of sport and physical activity research during this decade ( I ) . This interest probably stems from the belief that different motivational strategies may differentially impact cognition, affect, and behaviour of sport participants. To understand the motivational processes and outcomes in physical activity, many studies have employed an achievement goals perspective (2, 3). Specifically, these theories use a social cognitive framework to argue that how individuals’ endeavour to demonstrate competence in achievement settings is closely related to two distinct goals. When performance evaluation is based on normative standards, that is when success and failure are defined in comparison to the performance of others, then an ego goal orientation is salient (3). Alternatively, when performance

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N. Ntoumanis, S. Biddle‘ chool of Education, University of Exeter, !Department of Physical Education, Sports Science and Recreation Management, Loughborough University, UK

Key words: achievement goals: goal profile groups: motivational climates Professor Stuart J. H. Biddle, Department of Physical Education, Sports Science and Recreation Management, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LEI 1 3TU, United Kingdom Accepted for publication 29 December 1997

evaluation is self-referenced, that is when it is based on personal improvement and learning criteria, then a task goal orientation is exhibited. Different behavioural, cognitive, and affective outcomes are theorized for task- and ego-oriented individuals. For example, Roberts (4) suggested that task orientation is associated with high effort, seeking of challenging tasks, use of effective strategies, and other adaptive motivational patterns. For ego-oriented individuals, and especially for those who hold perceptions of low competence, generally maladaptive motivational patterns are observed, characterized by lack of effort and persistence, devaluation of activities, and selection of inappropriate tasks and strategies. Recently, Treasure and Roberts (5) argued for the need to examine the joint influence of dispositional

Goal profile groups and motivational climates goals and motivational climates (social climate factors) on the motivational patterns of physical activity participants. In other words, the cognitive, affective and behavioural patterns that these individuals exhibit in physical activity are formulated by both dispositional perspectives on achievement (e.g. task and ego goals) and by influences from salient social agents (e.g. coaches, parents, peers). Ames’s ( 6 ) work on classroom environments provides an important framework for physical activity research on motivational climates. Specifically, Ames has distinguished between mastery and performance perceptions of motivational climates. If students are involved in decision-making, their grouping is not based on normative ability, success is defined and evaluated in terms of individual effort and improvement, and discovery of new learning strategies is encouraged, then it is likely that students will perceive their classroom to be mastery-oriented. In contrast, when the focus of learning is on interpersonal comparison, evaluation is based on normative standards, grouping of students is based on ability, and time allocated for learning is inflexible, then it is likely that students will perceive the climate as perfor mance-oriented. It is important to note that in research on motivational climate the level of analysis is on the individual and not on the group. Therefore, although climate characteristics may vary to a certain extent across different groups or sports, the important issue is how individuals make sense of these differences in terms of their motivational consequences. Following Ames’s work (6), different kinds of interactions and instructions in different sports can be classified into mastery and performance climate dimensions according to their motivational qualities. Perceptions of a mastery climate in physical activity have been associated with adaptive motivational patterns, such as high enjoyment, effort, and perceived competence (7). However, when perceptions of a performance climate are salient then individuals are more likely to show maladaptive motivational responses such as decreased persistence and attribution of success to normative ability (8).

According to some theoretical predictions, there is a strong link between individuals’ perceptions of motivational climate in their team setting and their goal orientations. That is, the definitions of achievement and success emphasized by a social environment are usually compatible with the theories on achievement that the individuals will hold within that environment. In support of these arguments, research in sport has shown that perceptions of a mastery climate are linked with high task orientation, whereas perceptions of a performance climate are associated with high ego orientation and a downplay of task orientation (9, lo).

However, the previous research ignores the fact that the two main goal perspectives are largely independent (3, 11, 12), and therefore varying degrees of task and ego orientations can be found within the same person. According to Nicholls (3), by early adolescence individuals have the cognitive capacity to differentiate between ability and effort and, therefore, are able to adopt both goal orientations. Fox et al. ( I 1) have argued that since the two goal orientations have diffcren t motivational implications, their impact in combination may be rather different from their effects examined separately. Indeed, research that has employed an achievement goal profile groups analysis has shown that high ego orientation is not motivationally detrimental as long as it is accompanied by high task orientation. In the area of general psychology, Hofmann and Strickland (13) showed that high satisfaction with the task at hand was reported by individuals who had a moderately high degree of task orientation irrespective of the level of their ego orientation. In sport, Fox et al. (11) reported that individuals from both the high taskllow ego and high task/high ego groups enjoyed sport more than those from the low task/high ego group. Also, Roberts et al. (12) showed that athletes with high task orientation, regardless of level of ego orientation, believed effort to be the cause of success, significantly more so than those with low task orientation. These findings are in contrast with previous suggestions (14), based on separate examinations of the two achievement goals, that have called for the enhancement of task orientation with the concurrent suppression of ego orientation. Nevertheless, the previous results are compatible with the reality of modern sport that stresses winning as well as good personal performance and effort. It is important, therefore, to examine which combinations of goal orientations are compatible with perceptions of mastery and performance climates. Based on previous findings using a goal profile analysis, it was hypothesized that more functional perceptions of climate (i.e. mastery climate) would be perceived by those high in task orientation (irrespective of their ego orientation). In contrast, it was hypothesized that maladaptive perceptions of climate (i.e. performance climate) will be linked with low task orientation and high ego orientation. Method Participants and procedure The participants were 84 male and 62 female British university athletes from the first, and sometimes second, teams of the following sports: hockey, rugby, soccer, netball, basketball, and volleyball. Ages ranged from 18 to 26 years (M=21; SD=2.36). All the participants were at a competitive level and took

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Ntoumanis & Biddle Table 1, Pearson’s correlations between achievement goals and perceptions of motivational climates Mastery Climate

Performance Climate

0.55**

Task Orientation Ego Orientation

-0.20*

-0.04

0.33**

* k0.05, ** k O . 0 1

part in the final phase (“knock out” matches) of the British Universities Championships. An informed consent and two questionnaires were given to all the participants in a training session. The instructions underlined the need for honesty, that there were no right or wrong answers, and assured the participants that their replies would be kept confidential.

Instrumentation Task and ego orientation in sport questionnaire (TEOSQ): The TEOSQ (15) is a 13-item questionnaire with 7 items measuring task orientation and 6 items measuring ego orientation. When completing the TEOSQ, participants are requested to think of when they felt most successful in their sport and then indicate their agreement with items reflecting taskand ego-oriented criteria. Examples of task orientation items are “I learn a new skill by trying hard” and “I learn something that is fun to do”, whereas on the ego orientation subscale there are items such as “Others mess-up and I don’t’’ and “I can do better than my friends”. The response scale has a Likert format ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). The psychometric validity of the TEOSQ has been demonstrated by Duda (14) and Chi and Duda (16). Specifically, it was shown that the two subscales of the TEOSQ have high internal reliabilities and relatively clear factor structures. Perceived motivational climate in sport questionnaire (PMCSQ): The PMCSQ (9) assesses athletes’ perceptions of the motivational climates in their teams. It has a mastery and a performance subscale with 9

and 12 items respectively. The 21 items are answered following the stem “On this particular team...”, and responses are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). Examples of mastery climate items include “Players try to learn new skills” and “Trying hard is rewarded”, whereas on the performance climate scale there are items such as “Only the top players get noticed” and “Players are taken out for mistakes”. The PMCSQ’s subscales have been shown to have high internal reliabilities and relatively good factor structures (9, 17).

Results The internal reliability coefficients were satisfactory for all the subscales (a=0.84 for task orientation, a= 0.85 for ego orientation, a=0.85 for mastery climate, and a=0.87 for performance climate). The participants had high perceptions of a mastery climate (M= 3.91; SD=0.61) and task orientation (M=4.01; SD= 0.65), and moderate to high perceptions of a performance climate (M=2.45; SD=0.72) and ego orientation (M=2.72; SD=0.93). Pearson’s correlations were calculated to determine the degree of relationship between goal orientations and motivational climates. As Table 1 shows, perceptions of a mastery climate were strongly and positively related to task orientation, but unrelated to ego orientation. Perceptions of a performance climate were positively related to ego orientation and negatively related to task orientation. These results are similar to those reported by Seifriz et al. (9) and White (10). The correlation between task and ego goal orientations was small (-0.03) and not significant, providing further support to Nicholls’s (3) argument that varying degrees of the two goal orientations can be found within the same person. In order to examine which combinations of goal orientations are compatible with perceptions of mastery and performance climates, four achievement goal groups were created using the median-split technique: high tasWhigh ego (n=39), low task/low ego (n=32), low tasWhigh ego (n=35), and high taskllow ego (n=40). A one-way

Table 2. Means (M), Standard Deviations (SD), and Fvalues for each achievement goal profile group on perceptions of motivational climates. The range of scores for mastery and performance climates is from 1 to 5. The groups were created using the median-split technique High Task/ High Ego M

SD

Low Task/ Low Ego M

SD

Low Task/ High Ego M

High Task/ Low Ego

SD

M

SD

4.06a 2.33b

0.46 0.72

df

F

P

~

Mastery Performance

4.21a 2.44ab

0.62 0.60

3.72b 2.27b

0.62 0.82

3.5gb 2.74aC

0.57 0.69

3, 142 3.06 3, 142 9.57

0.03 0.00

Note: Group means sharing the same subscript (a, b, or c) in the same row are not significantly different at the R 0 . 0 5 level. For example, the high task/ high ego and the low task/ low ego groups do not differ significantly on performance climate since they share the same superscript (”b”).

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Goal profile groups and motivational climates Table 3. Medium (M) and Large (L) effect sizes of significant mean differences among the four achievement goal groups on mastery climate (upper diagonal in bold) and on performance climate (lower diagonal in italics)

1. High TasWHigh Ego 2. Low TasULow Ego 3. Low.TasWHigh Ego 4. High TasULow Ego

1

2

3

__

0.79 (M)

1.05 (L)

0.63(M)

0.63 (M) -0.92 (L) -0.58(M)

__

4

MANOVA was then conducted with achievement goal profile groups as the grouping variable and the two dimensions of motivational climate as the dependent variables (see Table 2 for means, standard deviations and F-values). In order to examine the meaningfulness of differences between the achievement goal profile groups on the dependent variables, effect sizes (ES) were computed in accordance with Thomas et al.3 (18) suggestion. The ES were calculated using the weighted pooled variance estimate as suggested by Hedges and Olkin (19) for the examination of differences between categorical variables (see Table 3). According to Cohen (20), an ES of 0.20 is considered as small, 0.50 as moderate, and 0.80 as large. Preliminary analysis showed that the data met the assumptions of MANOVA as described by Tabachnick and Fidell (21) and Vincent (22). Specifically, univariate tests for homogeneity of variance, as well as Box’s M multivariate test for homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, were not significant [Box’s M=11.21, F(9, 203496)=1.21, P=0.281]. Furthermore, the ratio of number of participants per group to number of dependent variables was adequate to ensure robustness of the analysis to modest violations of normality. The MANOVA was significant (Pillai’s criterion=0.239; F(3, 142)=6.41; P
were both low in task orientation and high in ego orientation. Specifically, the low tasWhigh ego group had higher perceptions of a performance climate than the low task/low ego (ES=0.63) and high tasWlow ego (ES=0.58) groups.

Discussion The purpose of the present study was to expand on previous research findings (9, 10) that have reported a correspondence between sport performers’ goal orientations and the type of goals promoted by the psychological environment in their teams (i.e. motivational climates). Since the two goal orientations have been found to be orthogonal (3, ll), we examined combinations of goal orientations in relation to perceptions of mastery and performance climates. Perceptions of a mastery climate are important if enjoyment, learning, and long-term commitment to an activity are sought (6). Our results show that more motivationally adaptive perceptions of climate (high mastery) are held by those who are high in task orientation, irrespective of whether they are high or low in ego orientation. This inference is substantiated by the high magnitude of the differences in effect sizes between high- and low-task-oriented individuals, which ranged from 0.63 to 1.05, showing the motivational importance of holding a high task orientation. This result is not surprising since a psychological environment that promotes individual improvement and increased effort is more likely to accommodate people with similar views on the nature and the means of achievement. However, the interesting finding from this study is that high perceptions of adaptive motivational climate (i.e. mastery climate) are also held by those who are high in ego orientation, as long as they are high in task orientation as well. Bearing in mind the negative effects on motivation that high ego orientation can have on its own, it is important that a mastery climate is implemented that will foster a task orientation, counterbalancing in that way the desires for both individual improvement and winning. The suggestion that high ego orientation is not motivationally detrimental as long as it is accompanied with high task orientation has also been made by other authors (1 1, 12). This suggestion is also in agreement with empirical evidence from modern sport which shows that high-level performers are high in both task and ego orientation. As Roberts et al. (12) noted, “It has always been a difficult task to convince coaches to depress ego orientation” ...(but) “we can enhance task orientation to moderate the potential debilitating effects of high ego orientation”. Perceptions of a performance climate have been associated with negative motivational outcomes, such as decreased persistence and attributions of success

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Ntoumanis & Biddle to normative ability (8). The results of this study show that motivationally maladaptive perceptions of climate (high performance) are held among those individuals high in ego orientation, especially when that is coupled with low task orientation. This is intuitively appealing since team climates that promote interpersonal comparison and overemphasize winning are more likely to accommodate people with similar beliefs about success. Other studies in the past (12, 23) have also shown that the high ego/low task goal group is the one with the least adaptive motivational patterns. A general inference from the above is that high task orientation is motivationally adaptive, whereas high ego orientation is motivationally detrimental only when it is coupled with low task orientation. Therefore, task orientation is a critical motivational factor. This has important practical implications for coaches and applied sport psychologists who should focus on the development of task orientation in their athletes through the design of appropriate strategies and instructions. As a future research direction, it would be interesting to examine whether a “matching hypothesis” exists in this area. That is, if individuals will be more motivated, show higher positive affect, and perhaps better performance, when the motivational climate in their team is compatible rather than incompatible with their dominant goal orientation profile.

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