Dynamic Interactive Model of Sport Motivation

Abstract

Motivation variables in 11 motivational instruments of 357 Slovenian male athletes (168 elite and 189 young athletes from age 12–14) in nine different sport disciplines (basketball, football, handball, water polo, ice hockey, ski jumping, alpine skiing, sport climbing, and judo) were obtained. Different concepts of motivation were researched, such as achievement motivation, incentive motivation, participation motivation, goal orientation, satisfaction and enjoyment in sport, self-efficacy, effort, and ability attributions. The most popular framework for motivation in sport lately has been social cognitive perspective. The aim of this study was to form a dynamic interactive model of sport motivation. We tried to upgrade different models of motivation to one unique meta model of sport motivation, which would explain possible behaviours and motivation in sport situations. Different statistic methods were used to define differences among young and elite athletes and between athletes in group and individual sports. The results show important differences among those groups and suggest that specific sport discipline also has a specific footprint inside motivation. Factor analysis and discriminant analysis were used to explore sport motivation space. The results also suggest that it is possible to define some main determinants of sport motivation that can be connected to previous models of sport motivation.