Motivational Style Differences Between High School Senior and Collegiate Freshmen Athletes
Motivational Style Differences Between High School Senior and Collegiate Freshmen Athletes
Issue Date
2007
Authors
Wolf, Thomas
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Abstract
It is of theoretical and practical importance to examine the changes in motivation among athletes transitioning from high school to collegiate sports. The question of why people participate in sports is intriguing. In particular, the change in motivational style that a person goes through as they progress to higher levels of competition is of interest to the field of sport psychology. The purpose of this study is to examine these motivational differences between high school senior and collegiate freshmen athletes. More specifically, to show that high school seniors in this study are more extrinsically motivated than collegiate freshmen athletes. After administering the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS-28, Pelletier et al., 1995), high school seniors (n49) scored significantly higher on the extrinsic scale than the collegiate freshmen (n45). There were no significant differences between the two groups on the intrinsic scale. When gender was included in the analysis, there was a statistically significant interaction for the intrinsic scale. On this scale high school males scored significantly higher than the high school females. Also, collegiate females scored significantly higher than collegiate males on the same scale. Future research may be done on a broader sample sizes or by using qualitative research to get first hand experiences of athletes going through these changes. Other transitions to different levels of athletics may be examined in the future.