How coaches structure the practice and competition environments influence the motivational outcomes of athletes (Treasure, 2001). Traditionally, two structures have been examined; a task-involving climate, where effort, learning, and improvement are stressed, and an ego-involving climate, which emphasizes social comparison and outperforming others. Athletes’ perceptions of the climate are hypothesized to influence effort, persistence, competence, and dispositional goal orientations. However, few studies have examined the influence of the climate on psychological skills or explored these relationships over time. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the perceived motivational climate, goal orientations, perceived competence, and psychological skills over the course of a competitive high school football season.
Method:
At the beginning (time 1) and toward the end of the season (time 2), 101 football players, from five different high schools, completed a series of questionnaires. These questionnaires included: demographics, perceived motivational climate using the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire (Newton, Duda, & Yin, 2001), dispositional achievement goals as measured by the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda & Nicholls, 1992), Perceived Sport Competence (Amorose, 2003), and Athletic Coping Skill Inventory-28 (Smith et al., 1995). Approximately 15 weeks elapsed between time 1 and time 2.
Analysis/Results:
The players perceived a significant decrease in the task-involving climate and significant increase in the ego-involving climate from the beginning to end of their football season. A hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed that task climate at time 2 predicted task orientation at time 2 when controlling for task orientation at time 1. A similar finding did not emerge for ego orientation. The hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that perceptions of the motivational climate did not predict changes in competence or psychological skills over time. Yet, a task-involving climate was positively associated with perceived competence and the goal setting and concentration subscales of the psychological coping skills inventory at time 2.
Conclusions:
Near the end of the competitive season, football players noted a slightly higher ego-involving climate and lower task-involving climate compared to earlier in the season. This may negatively influence motivational outcomes as the perceived task-involving climate did positively predict athletes’ task orientation and was positively associated with perceived competence, goal setting, and concentration skills at the end of the season. However, this assertion should be tempered in that changes in psychological skills or competence across the competitive season were not predicted by the perceived motivational climate.