What does it take to be successful here? A longitudinal study of achievement motivation in youth sport

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MALMÖ S TUDIES IN SPORT SCIEN CES V OL 32 JO AKIM IN GRELL MALMÖ UNIVERSIT

WHA

T

DOES

IT

TAKE

T

O

BE

SUCCESSFUL

HERE?

JOAKIM INGRELL

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE

SUCCESSFUL HERE?

A longitudinal study of achievement motivation

in youth sport

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Malmö Studies in Sport Sciences Vol 32

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Malmö University, 2019

Faculty of Education and Society

JOAKIM INGRELL

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO

BE SUCCESSFUL HERE?

A longitudinal study of achievement motivation in

youth sport

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Publikationen finns även elektroniskt, se muep.mau.se

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ABSTRACT

The focal aim of this dissertation project centers on understanding the

importance of some of the underlying factors responsible for the

sociali-zation of achievement motivation in youth sport and its affective

out-comes. Furthermore, this dissertation project focuses on the specializing

stage of development, more specifically, student-athletes (N = 78)

at-tending a compulsory school with a sports profile.

This dissertation project was guided by the theoretical frameworks

provided by achievement goal theory (Nicholls, 1984, 1989), implicit

theories of ability (Dweck, 2000), Ames’ (1992a, 1992b) motivational

climate, Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (Marsh, 1984; Marsh & Parker,

1984) athletic burnout (Raedeke & Smith, 2001), and gender as a social

institution (Lorber, 1994).

In the first study, the aim was to analyze and problematize athletic

ability longitudinally and with a gender perspective as it is perceived,

discussed, and valued by student-athletes. A mixed method approach

was used in this study consisting of quantitative analysis (multilevel

modeling) of a three-year, six-wave data collection (N = 78).

Further-more, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 of the

student-athletes. The two main results of this study were that entity beliefs

in-creased, and incremental beliefs decreased during the three-year period,

and that gender added a further understanding of the beliefs of

student-athletes regarding athletic ability.

The second study aimed to examine achievement goals in youth sport

longitudinally and the within-person effects of perceived motivational

climates by coaches, peers, and parents on achievement goal

orienta-tions. The student-athletes (N = 78) completed a multi-section

question-naire, six times over a three-year period, assessing the study variables

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and the multilevel modeling analysis revealed that both the task

orienta-tion and the ego orientaorienta-tion decreased for this age group over the

three-year period. Furthermore, the perceived task involving peer climate was

significantly and positively related to task orientation, and perceived

ego-involving coaching climate was significantly and positively related

to ego orientation.

In the third study, the aim was to examine the developmental

trajecto-ries of student-athlete burnout perceptions and the within-person

rela-tionship between achievement goals and burnout perceptions. The

par-ticipants (N = 78), time frame, and measurement points were the same in

this study, as in studies I and II. The results from the multilevel growth

models revealed that burnout perceptions increased for this age group

over the three-year period. Furthermore, task orientation was

signifi-cantly and negatively related to a reduced sense of accomplishment and

sport devaluation.

The findings from this dissertation project highlight some of the

com-plexity of achievement motivation in youth sport; the relationships

be-tween this type of motivation and the context, in this case, a school with

a sports profile, and organized sports, and significant others such as

coaches, peers, and parents. Furthermore, the results from this

disserta-tion project underline the advantage of considering a specific

develop-mental stage when studying achievement motivation in youth sport

lon-gitudinally.

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SWEDISH SUMMARY

Syftet med detta avhandlingsprojekt var att förstå vikten av några av de

bakomliggande faktorer som kan tänkas vara ansvariga för

sociali-seringen av prestationsmotivation inom ungdomsidrotten samt dess

af-fektiva konsekvenser. Vidare fokuserade detta avhandlingsprojekt på det

specialiserande karriärstadiet, mer specifikt elever (N = 78) som gick i

en idrottsprofilerad grundskola.

Avhandlingens teoretiska ramverk var: målorienteringsteorin

(Nicholls, 1984, 1989), ”mindsets” (Dweck, 2000), motivationsklimat

(Ames, 1992a, 1992b), Big Fish-Little-Pond Effect (Marsh, 1984;

Marsh & Parker, 1984) idrottslig utbrändhet (Raedeke & Smith, 2001)

och kön som social konstruktion (Lorber, 1994).

I den första studien var syftet att analysera och problematisera

idrotts-lig förmåga, longitudinellt och med ett genusperspektiv, utifrån hur det

uppfattades, diskuterades och värderades av de idrottande eleverna. En

kombination av kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder användes i denna

studie bestående av en kvantitativ analys av en treårig datainsamling (N

= 78) samt semistrukturerade intervjuer med 27 av de idrottande

elever-na. De två huvudsakliga resultaten var att synen på idrottslig förmåga

som statisk, icke kontrollerbar och nedärvd ökade medan synen på

id-rottslig förmåga som förändringsbar, utvecklingsbar och kontrollerbar

minskade. Vidare gav genusperspektivet en ytterligare förståelse för

elevernas föreställningar gällande idrottslig förmåga.

Syftet med den andra studien var att undersöka unga idrottares

målo-rientering över tid samt relationen mellan målomålo-rienteringar och det

upp-levda motivationsklimatet, skapat av tränare, föräldrar och kamrater.

Id-rottande elever (N = 78) svarade på flertalet enkäter, sex gånger över en

treårsperiod, och den statistiska analysen visade att både

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uppgiftsorien-tering och egoorienuppgiftsorien-tering minskade för denna åldersgrupp. Ett

uppgifts-orienterat kamratklimat var statistiskt signifikant och positivt relaterat

till uppgiftsorientering. Resultatet visade också att upplevt egoorienterat

tränarklimat var statistiskt signifikant och positivt relaterat till

egoorien-tering.

I den tredje studien var syftet att undersöka idrottande elevers

ut-vecklingskurvor gällande idrottslig utbrändhet i form av emotionell och

fysisk utmattning, reducerad syn på idrottskompetens och nedvärdering

av idrottens betydelse samt relationen mellan målorienteringar och de

tre variablerna kopplade till idrottslig utbrändhet. Deltagarna (N = 78),

tidsramen och mätpunkterna var desamma i den här studien som i studie

I och studie II. Resultaten visade att idrottslig utbrändhet ökade under

treårsperioden. Dessutom var uppgiftsorienteringen statistiskt

signifi-kant och negativt relaterad till reducerad syn på idrottskompetens och

nedvärdering av idrottens betydelse.

Detta avhandlingsprojekt lyfter fram en del av komplexiteten gällande

prestationsmotivation inom ungdomsidrotten, relationerna mellan denna

typ av motivation och kontexten, i detta fall en idrottsprofilerad

grund-skola, organiserade idrott samt betydelsefulla skapare av

motivations-klimatet som tränare, kamrater och föräldrar. Vidare understryker

resul-taten från detta avhandlingsprojekt fördelen av att överväga ett specifikt

utvecklingsstadium vid longitudinella studier av prestationsmotivation

inom ungdomsidrotten.

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LIST OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

The present doctoral dissertation is based on the following three studies:

Article I

Ingrell, J., Larneby, M., Johnson, U., & Hedenborg, S. (2019).

Student-athletes’ beliefs about athletic ability: A longitudinal and mixed method

gender study. Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum, 10, 117-138

Article II

Ingrell, J., Johnson, U., & Ivarsson, A. (2019). Achievement goals in

youth sport and the influence of coaches, peers, and parent: a

longitudi-nal study. Manuscript submitted for publication

Article III

Ingrell, J., Johnson, U., & Ivarsson, A. (2018). Developmental changes

in burnout perceptions among student-athletes: An achievement goal

perspective. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology,

doi:10.1080/1612197X.2017.1421679

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally!

Writing a dissertation is a lonely and anguished journey, and now that

I have arrived at the finish line, I want to begin this chapter by patting

myself on the shoulder. However, I doubt that I could have done it

with-out help and support from the people around me.

To my main supervisor, Urban Johnson, it has been great to have you

on my journey from the start at Halmstad University in 2003 to the

completion of this dissertation. I am very grateful for the way you have

approached me and my thoughts with empathy and professionalism.

Although there has been a geographical distance between us, you have

always been close at hand to give constructive feedback when I needed

it.

To my other supervisor, Tomas Peterson, I want to say thank you for

your autonomy support. Also, I want to thank you for making me, as a

sport psychologist, feel included at the Department of Sport Sciences.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Andreas Ivarsson. You

were always there when needed to guide me through the tricky but

in-teresting world of statistics.

To the principal, teachers, and most of all, the student-athletes at the

sports school, without you, there would not be any dissertation. Thanks

for contributing!

The colleagues at the Department of Sport Sciences should have a big

thank you! Over the years, I have been involved in interesting

collabora-tions, a special thanks here to Sverker Fryklund, Torsten Buhre, Jenny

Vikman, and Mats Johnsson.

Another colleague, a fellow doctoral researcher, and friend, Marie

Larneby, should have a big thank you. We have participated in the same

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research project, supported each other both inside and outside of work,

which has led to a friendship I truly treasure.

For me, the climate is very important, within sports or work. Some

people who meant a lot to the working climate and who I want to thank

are Emelie Niléhn, Björn Hansson, and Annika Larsson.

I would also like to thank the present and former doctoral students Jens

Alm, Jyri Backman, Anna Bergenfeldt Fabri, Daniel Bjärsholm, Sepand

Mashreghi Blank, Niklas Hafen, Anna-Maria Hellborg, Alexander

Jans-son, Kalle JonasJans-son, Isak Lidström, Matilda Lindberg, Mattias

Melkers-son, Julia Rönnbäck, Sofia Sebelius, Marit Stub Nybelius, and Joakim

Åkesson. There are many memories, but it is the little things that stick

with you, such as a nice cup of coffee or hilarious lunches.

I would also like to thank Magnus Lindwall for the inspirational

versation we had during my 90% seminar. I appreciate how you

con-ducted the seminar, and your comments, that took the work forward.

I would also like to thank Susanna Hedenborg for being the senior

re-searcher at the department who gave comments on my manuscript after

the 90% seminar. Furthermore, you have contributed to many interesting

learning activities during my time as a doctoral student.

During my time at the Department of Sport Science, the department

has been run by three individuals who all, in different ways, have been

meaningful to me.

To Aage Radmann, I would like to say thanks for always supporting

me, reinforcing what I did well, and constructively correcting me when

needed.

To Kristian Sjövik, thank you for giving me the opportunity to follow

my heart and be able to move to Stockholm for a while for me to carry

out my commitments from a distance.

Related to this, I would also like to thank Liselotte Ohlson at the

Swedish Sports Confederation for creating both a physical place for me

to sit in and a context for me to grow in during my time in Stockholm.

A big thank you also to Torun Mattson, who went seamlessly from

being a fellow doctoral researcher to becoming our new head of

depart-ment. Thank you for listening to all aspects of me.

My family in Landskrona, Glumslöv, Uddevalla, and Malmö should

have a big thank you for all the love and support. You are absolutely

fantastic! An extra big thank you goes to my mother, who has always

been there.

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What would life be without friends? Two friends I especially want to

thank are Michael and Kim. Thanks for being there even when the

geo-graphical distance between us was big and/or when the time apart has

been too long. I would also like to thank Kim for allowing me to use one

of his works, Urban Abstract III, as a motive for the cover of this

disser-tation. I thought this work represented the dissertation's content

brilliant-ly. The growth curves in this dissertation are linear, but if you tear off

the surface, the chaos representing adolescence is revealed.

Also, a shout out to all involved in the yearly, and legendary, crayfish

party. I hope you all know what you mean to me!

I am saving the best for last.

Moa, the love of my life, no words can describe how thankful I am. I

am still amazed at how much love, strength, and wisdom you have. You

were my rock when I was low, but more importantly, you threw yourself

around me and celebrated together with me in moments of success. I

love you and treasure everything we have.

Hilda, my wonderful daughter, oh, how I love you. I will always let

you know, but still, if you ever open up this page, I want you to read

about how you have contributed to this dissertation far beyond what you

ever can comprehend. Being mindful with your curiosity in play, when

you master new skills, and soaking up every laugh you provide has been

a “happy place” necessary for me to go on.

To My, you are one week old when writing this, but I have a lifetime

of love for you.

Joakim Ingrell

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INTRODUCTION

Millions of young people participate in organized sport and as argued by

many researcher (e.g., Bangsbo et al., 2016; Støckel, Strandbu, Solenes,

Jørgensen, & Fransson, 2010; Zaff, Moore, Papillo, & Williams, 2003),

children’s early involvement in organized sport is often considered to be a

key opportunity for the development of movement skills, social skills,

self-esteem, and the maintenance of health through physical activity.

However, whether such outcomes are realized could to a large extent be

dependent on the type of influence exerted by social-environmental

fac-tors during these influential formative years (Bélanger et al., 2015;

Wagnsson, 2009). Statistics from the Swedish sports confederation

(Sports in numbers, 2017) show that between the years 2014-2015

ap-proximately 70% of all children between 12-15 years old in Sweden

par-ticipated in organized sport at least one day a week. Because the sports

environment is inherently a competence and achievement context (Støckel

et al., 2010), motivational factors play an important role. Although

im-portant aspects of individuals’ motivations are determined by their own

beliefs, cognitions, and values (Nicholls, 1989), significant influences can

also be exerted by key social agents like coaches, peers, and parents

(Ames, 1992a, 1992b). These three social agents are perhaps the most

consistent and reliable sources of influence across the athlete’s sporting

experience. About athletes sporting experience, models of athletic career

progression have been proposed by both Côté, Baker, and Abernethy

(2003) and Wylleman, Alfermann, and Lavallee (2004). The

initia-tion/sampling stage refers the early career and is characterized by

partici-pants who are generally prompted to try several different sports to see if

they either enjoy them, have some talent, or perhaps both (Côté al., 2003;

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Wylleman et al., 2004). Following this period, athletes tend to focus on

one or two sports in which they specialize, learning the key skills, tactics,

and rules. This specializing phase tends to occur from around the age of

11–12 years. The next developmental stage is termed the

invest-ment/mastery stage (Côté al., 2003; Wylleman et al., 2004) and begins

from approximately 15 years of age, depending on the sport. The

invest-ment/mastery stage is defined by a heavy and exclusive focus on

deliber-ate practice, specialist coaching in a single sport, and markedly decreased

parental involvement (Côté et al., 2003). In contrast, it is hard to delineate

the specializing career stage because it is characterized by change. These

changes include (a) decreasing number of sports/activities; (b) a decrease

in deliberate play, being replaced with deliberate practice, and (c) gradual

changes in the roles of coaches (from “helper” to “specialist”), parents

(from direct to indirect involvement), and peers (from

stimulation/co-participation towards the fulfillment of emotional needs) (Côté et al.,

2003). The final stage is called recreational (Côté al., 2003) or

discontinu-ation (Wylleman et al., 2004) and during this period, athletes stop

partici-pating in competitions on the level they had previously achieved but may

continue training for recreational purposes.

This dissertation project is part of an interdisciplinary research project

with the overall purpose of studying the sociological, physiological, and

psychological factors that could potentially affect continuous and/or

successful participation in sports. Furthermore, this dissertation project

focuses on the specializing stage of development, more specifically,

stu-dent-athletes attending a compulsory school with a sports profile. As

de-scribed above, children and young adolescents in the specializing stage

are argued to be influenced by socio-environmental factors that

poten-tially change during this meaningful time period. Hence, this

disserta-tion project has a longitudinal focus on the achievement motivadisserta-tion of

young student-athletes regarding their participation in sport. The focal

aim of this dissertation project, therefore, centers on understanding the

importance of some of the underlying factors responsible for the

sociali-zation of achievement motivation in youth sport and its affective

out-comes. Furthermore, when studying the social influence on these young

student-athletes achievement motivations, I am examining the reasons

behind the motivated actions and how coaches, parents, and peers

influ-ence these reasons over time.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

The foundation for this dissertation project rests upon the theoretical

frameworks used as the lenses through which the research problems and

research questions are being evaluated. Those frameworks are:

achieve-ment goal theory (Nicholls, 1984, 1989), implicit theories of ability

(Dweck, 2000), Ames’ (1992a, 1992b) motivational climate,

Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (Marsh, 1984; Marsh & Parker, 1984), athletic

burn-out (Raedeke & Smith, 2001), and gender as a social institution

(Lorber, 1994). These theoretical frameworks will be described in more

detail below.

Achievement motivational theories

The theories regarding achievement goals were developed in the early

1980s by, for example, John Nicholls (1984), Carole Ames and Russel

Ames (1984), and Carol Dweck (1986). Each of these theorists has

dis-tinguished between two distinct goals for achievement behavior and

have also offered similar enough conceptualizations to be referred to

to-gether as “the dichotomous achievement goal model.” In this model,

achievement goal is defined as the purpose of engaging in achievement

behavior (Maehr, 1989).

Achievement goal theory

Achievement goal theory (AGT) is a social-cognitive theory that

as-sumes that the individual is an intentional, rational, goal-directed

organ-ism and that achievement goals govern achievement beliefs and guide

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subsequent decision making and behavior in achievement contexts. In

developing AGT, Nicholls (1984, 1989) claimed that a person’s internal

sense of ability was a main achievement motive but proposed that in

achievement contexts, ability could be construed in two different

man-ners specifying the goals (purposes or reasons) that direct

achievement-related behaviors. Nicholls (1984) stated:

Achievement behavior is defined as behavior directed at developing or demonstrating high rather than low ability. It is shown that ability can be conceived in two ways. First, ability can be judged high or low with reference to the individual’s own past performance or knowledge. In this context, gains in mastery indicate competence, second, ability can be judged as capacity relative to that of others. In this context, a gain in mastery alone does not indicate high ability. To demonstrate high capacity, one must achieve more with equal ef-fort or use less efef-fort than do others for an equal performance. (Nicholls, 1984, p. 328)

These two conceptions of ability, often used interchangeably with the

term competencies, represent two contrasting achievement goals that

de-fine people’s success in an achievement task. People are task-involved

when gains in the personal mastery of a skill or task enrich them with a

sense of competence. In this respect, self-referent improvement or

learn-ing a task is sufficient to generate feellearn-ings of personal achievement and,

therefore, an individual in a state of task involvement focuses mainly on

personal development irrespective of others. In contrast, people are ego

involved when their sense of competence depends on demonstrating

su-perior performance to others or equal performance to others but with

less effort exhibited. A person in a state of ego involvement is,

there-fore, primarily concerned with the perceived ability of themselves

com-pared to others and the external demonstrations of this ability. An

im-portant attribute of achievement goal orientations is that they are

or-thogonal. This fact means that task and ego goal orientations are

inde-pendent and that a person can be high or low in either or both

orienta-tions at the same time (Harwood, Spray, & Keegan, 2008; Roberts,

2012).

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Some researchers have been critical of the use of achievement goal

theory in sport arguing that task involvement, as a state, does not exist in

sport because of the ego-involving nature of the sport experience

(Har-wood, Hardy, & Swain, 2000; Harwood et al., 2008). They (Harwood et

al., 2008), instead suggested three goal states and goal orientation called

task involvement-process, task-involvement-product, and ego.

Counter-arguments to this critique have been made (see Roberts, 2012; Roberts,

Treasure, & Conroy, 2007; Treasure et al., 2001) arguing that, although

meaningful differences may exist between different achievement

con-texts, such as sport and school, the typical classroom is, just as the sport

context is, competitive, evaluative, public in nature, and colored by

norms and tests of competence. Further counterarguments to the three

goal states and goal orientations suggested by Harwood et al. (2008) is

that their concern is more about the what of achievement striving rather

than criteria individuals use to evaluate whether they have been

success-ful, the why of achievement striving as originally conceptualized

(Rob-erts, 2012).

Developmental psychology suggests that younger and older children

may have different understandings of the nature of ability, effort, and

performance (Wigfield, Eccles, Fredricks, Simpkins, Roeser, &

Schie-fele, 2015). However, there is no consensus regarding the reason for this

phenomenon, whether it would be cognitive development or

social-contextual influences (Cimpian, 2017; Wigfield et al., 2015). Nicholls’

(1984) theory emerged from developmental ideas about how young

children move through a temporal process gradually differentiating

con-cepts of ability. Because of socialization experiences in childhood and

adolescence, individuals develop a tendency to adopt task- or

ego-involved goals in achievement situations. In the early years, from five to

seven years of age, children do not differentiate between the concepts of

ability. The tasks that children are uncertain of completing are viewed as

difficult and requires more effort, which, when mastered through effort,

provides them with an internal sense of ability. In this stage, Nicholls’

(1989) argues that an internal sense of ability is equated with trying

hard, learning, and understanding something more fully. On cognitive

grounds, this undifferentiating state might be viewed as the earliest or

indeed the purest form of task involvement. Through a series of

cogni-tive-developmental stages, children at eleven or twelve years of age are

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assumed to be able to understand and differentiate between conceptions

of ability and, therefore, be ego involved. At this stage, children

under-stand that difficult tasks are those that only a few can perform and that

normative ability, as opposed to effort, determines whether they can

complete such tasks. Effort and ability become inversely related; ability

sets the limit on what effort alone can accomplish. Furthermore, high

effort is not enough for a person to feel successful or competent

(Nicholls, 1989).

The theoretical predictions along with the two definitions of

compe-tence have, in subsequent research, been applied at different levels of

analysis: (a) the dispositional level (goal orientation), (b) the

situation-al/contextual level (motivational climate), and (c) the state level (goal

involvement) (Harwood et al., 2008). The core AGT predictions

pro-posed by Nicholls (1984,1989) revolves around the positive and

adap-tive pattern of cogniadap-tive, affecadap-tive, and behavioral responses likely to

emerge when an individual experience a state of task involvement. At

the state level, individuals will engage in positive achievement striving

through effort, persistence, and challenging task choices. At a

distional level, people high in task orientation will, for example, have

posi-tive beliefs about sport, including the causes of success in sport and the

moral behaviors associated with their pursuits. Furthermore, Nicholls

(1984, 1989) proposed that the adoption of task- and/or ego-involved

goals for a specific activity would rest on the interaction between an

in-dividual’s dispositional goal orientation and situational cues specific to

that achievement context. Although a task-involved person and an

ego-involved person could have similar patterns of motivational responses,

this situation is only happening under the circumstances that the person

has maintained a high perception of ability (Nicholls, 1984, 1989). As

an example, in sport, if an athlete perceives that adequacy depends on

winning but is confident in doing so is likely to approach the task with

at least enough effort to win. There are no normative threats regarding

the athlete's sense of self. However, because of the external sources of

control within ego involvement, the perception of ability is more fragile.

As a consequence, when the perceived ability is low or when

ego-involved athletes are uncertain of normative success, Nicholls (1989)

hypothesized that a negative and maladaptive pattern of psychological

responses would occur. Examples of these responses include effort

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withdrawal, low persistence, avoiding challenging tasks, unhealthy

at-tributions for outcomes, greater stress and anxiety, and a tendency

to-ward morally unacceptable behaviors within the specific achievement

domain. These predictions have been studied over the past thirty years

where a great deal of research has focused upon the antecedents and

consequences of athletes' task and ego orientations as dispositional

achievement tendencies in sport (see Biddle,Wang, Kavussanu, &

Spray, 2003 for a systematic review), as well as situationally induced

achievement goals (see Van Yperen, Blaga, & Postmes, 2015 for a

me-ta-analysis). The presence of task goals has almost invariably been

asso-ciated with positive motivational outcomes, whereas, the presence of

ego goals is hypothesized to produce an array of less desirable

out-comes, especially when perceived competence is low, or were not

ac-companied by task goals.

Implicit theories of ability

Dweck (2000), together with colleagues (e.g., Dweck & Legget, 1988)

has proposed specific individual differences that lead to the pursuit of

different goals. According to Dweck, attributes of the self, other people,

places, and the world, in general, can be conceived as fixed,

uncontrol-lable factors or, alternatively, as malleable and controluncontrol-lable factors open

to development. These individual difference variables have become

known as implicit theories. The first approach has been termed an entity

theory, and the second is called an incremental theory. Depending on

their views of human attributes, people can be described as entity

theo-rists or incremental theotheo-rists.

A link between implicit theories and achievement goals were initially

articulated in the educational domain as combined determined

achieve-ment-related cognitions, affect, and behavior (Harwood et al., 2008).

The reason for this combination was that people could interpret the

achievement settings differently depending on underlying personality

variables (implicit theories) and their concern with proving, relative to

improving, competence in that setting. The core predictions in relation

to this link, proposed by Dweck (2000) was that incremental theorists

are more likely to pursue task goals because these goals serve to develop

an individual’s unstable, malleable ability. In contrast, entity theorists

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are more likely to endorse ego goals because these goals serve to

demonstrate or prove the adequacy of an individual’s stable ability or to

avoid displaying the inadequacy of that individual’s stable ability.

According to the meta-analysis by Burnett, O’Boyle, VanEpps,

Pol-lack, and Finkel (2013) and Vella, Braithewaite, Gardner, and Spray

(2016) the most commonly studied correlates of implicit beliefs are goal

orientations and motivational climate. Incremental beliefs are positively

associated with a task orientation and mastery climate, and negatively

associated with a performance climate. In contrast, entity beliefs are

positively associated with an ego orientation and performance climate

and negatively associated with a mastery climate. These results are

con-sistent with the foundational, theoretical, and empirical work of Dweck

(2000), whereby implicit beliefs about ability are hypothesized to

inﬂuence behavior because they give meaning to the goals that one

pur-sues within achievement contexts such as sport and PE. Ability beliefs

may also be stronger among older children who are more readily able to

distinguish between ability and effort than younger children (Fry &

Du-da, 1997).

Motivational climate

A central feature concerning the achievement motivational theories

de-scribed above is that they recognize the role played by the situation or

environment in manipulating an individual’s achievement goals for a

specific task or activity. Ames (1992a) adopted the term motivational

climate to describe the goal structures emphasized in the achievement

context. Two dimensions of motivational climate, mastery, and

perfor-mance, have been further explored in physical activity and sports. The

Mastery (or task involving) climate refers to structures that support the

effort, cooperation, and emphasis on learning and task mastery. In

con-trast, performance (or ego-involving) climates refer to situations that

foster normative comparison, intrateam competition, and punitive

ap-proach by coaches, for example.

Ames (1992b) started to examine the acronym TARGET, which

stands for: Tasks, Authority, Recognition, Groupings, Evaluation, and

Timing, in order to determine how structures make different goals

sali-ent. A task climate would include collaborative tasks, democratic

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lead-ership, recognition for effort and improvement, mixed ability groupings,

individual evaluation, and sufficient time for everyone to learn a skill.

An ego-climate would include competitive tasks, autocratic leadership,

recognition of normative ability, segregation by ability, normative

eval-uation, and time for only the more advanced students to complete a task.

In most environments, however, the above behaviors are likely to occur

interchangeably depending on the circumstances, and so it is unlikely

that an exclusive ego or task climate will be perceived.

As with goal orientation, the perceived mastery and performance

cli-mates are orthogonal (

Goudas & Biddle, 1994;

Roberts, Treasure, &

Conroy, 2007). However, based on their findings that results become

more important for elite handball players towards the end of the season

and that focus on results could alter the perceptions of the environment,

Abrahamsen and Pensgaard (2012) questioned the orthogonality of the

motivational climate.

Regarding the two identified types of motivational climates (Ames,

1992a, 1992b), plenty of research has investigated the motivational,

af-fective, and behavioral correlates of perceived mastery climates and

perceived performance climates. Different reviews in the area (see

Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1999; Harwood, Spray, & Keegan, 2008;

Har-wood, Keegan, Smith, & Raine, 2015) have all reported the same

pat-tern, wherein perceived mastery climates were associated with positive

experiences and perceived performance climates were linked to

mala-daptive experiences. Given the variety of conceptually and qualitatively

distinct types of relationship that are possible between an athlete and

their coaches, parents, and peers, there is likely to be a corresponding

variety of possible social goals. For example, peer relationships are

rela-tionships between relative equals, while athlete–adult relarela-tionships may

often represent imbalances in power, and this dynamic is likely to

im-pact upon the social goals adopted by the athlete in each instance, as

well as how motivational goals are endorsed, perceived, adopted and

re-inforced.

The parental motivational climate influences how children perceive,

understand, and react to achievement-related contexts, such as practices

and competitions. More specifically, a task-involving climate is

charac-terized by parent behaviors that encourage learning and enjoyment, and

where parents express satisfaction when children try something new,

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make mistakes as a part of the learning process, and subsequently

im-prove as a result. When parents emphasized success without exerting

effort or created a worry-conducive environment, this situation

charac-terized an ego-involving climate (Reinboth & Duda, 2004; Roberts et

al., 2007; White, 1996).

Research on coaching suggests that certain supportive and

emotional-ly-composed behaviors, such as positive reinforcement,

mistake-contingent encouragement, positive and encouraging corrective

instruc-tion, and technical instrucinstruc-tion, are consistent with and help create

task-involving motivational climates. In contrast, an ego-task-involving coaching

climate is characterized by coaches giving differential attention and

pos-itive reinforcement to athletes who are most competent and instrumental

to winning. Skill development is deemed more important to win than

personal development. They are also likely to react to mistakes and poor

performances with punitive responses. (Smith, Cumming, & Smoll,

2008; Smith, Smoll, & Cumming, 2009).

Vazou, Ntoumanis, and Duda (2005, 2006) and others (e.g., Harwood

& Swain, 2001) have proposed that peers can also play an important role

in formulating the motivational climate. Through interviews with boys

and girls (age 12 and 16 years), Vazou, Ntoumanis, and Duda (2005)

identified eleven dimensions that characterized how peers influence

mo-tivation including: improvement, equal treatment, relatedness support,

cooperation, effort, intra-team competition, intra-team conflict,

norma-tive ability, autonomy support, mistakes, and evaluation of competence.

Subsequently, Vazou, Ntoumanis, and Duda (2006) operationalized

task-involving peer interactions as being based on the aspects of

im-provement, relatedness support, and effort, and ego-involving peer

in-teractions based on intra-team competition and ability and intra-team

conflict. Similarly, Keegan, Spray, Harwood, and Lavallee (2009,

2010), through interviews with boys and girls ages 7-18 years,

conclud-ed that peers influencconclud-ed each other's motivation through collaborative

behaviors (e.g., building confidence in each other), competitive

behav-iors (e.g., fostering rivalry), evaluative communication (e.g., offering

criticism and praise), altruistic behaviors (e.g., offering emotional

sup-port), and social relationships (e.g., friendship). As such, considering

peer-created motivational climate alongside the coach created one has

revealed that peer-created motivational climate uniquely contributes to

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the prediction of important variables such as sportspersonship, burnout,

vitality (Ntoumanis, Taylor, & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2012), physical

self-worth, anxiety, and effort (Vazou et al., 2006). Furthermore,

per-ceived peer-created ego- and task-involving motivational climates are

only moderately related to the respective coach-created climate

dimen-sions, suggesting that coach- and peer-created task and ego climates are

somewhat independent constructs.

Goal orientations and motivational climates

Goal orientations are internalizations of the messages within the

motiva-tional climate and explain how individuals interpret, approach, and

ulti-mately respond to achievement/performance related situations (Ames,

1992a, 1992b; Nicholls, 1989). Goal orientations can, therefore, be

de-scribed as schemas that guide how athletes will approach and respond to

the achievement-related situations (e.g., practices) they experience

(Kaplan & Maehr, 2007). Dweck and Leggett (1988) stated that

alt-hough dispositions are key to determining the adoption of a particular

goal, situational factors can alter the goal that will be adopted in an

achievement setting. Thus, the children's exposure to task-involving

mo-tivational climates in their formative years is expected to foster the

de-velopment of a task goal orientation (Roberts & Treasure, 1992), which,

in turn, would influence their responses to future achievement situations.

Conceptually, individuals within a task-involving climate may have

higher levels of perceived competence because of the messages instilled

regarding the importance of skill mastery and personal improvement.

Additionally, a task-involving climate inherently provides opportunities

for rewards because these are based on one’s own effort and

improve-ment. In contrast, athletes within an ego-involving climate may not

per-ceive an increase in competence given that individuals within this type

of environment are only recognized for their demonstration of

norma-tively high ability and are punished when they make mistakes. Thus,

they may have fewer opportunities (e.g., to outdo another person to be

rewarded successfully) for information that will validate their sense of

competence. Empirical research provides partial support for this link

identifying a positive association between a task-involving climate and

perceptions of competence among both youth sport participants and

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physical education students (Harwood et al., 2015; Harwood et al.,

2008).

Parents, peers, and coaches all contribute uniquely, and to some

ex-tent interactively, to the motivational climate that athletes experience

(e.g., Chan, Lonsdale, & Fung, 2012; Le Bars, Gernigon, & Ninot,

2009; O'Rourke, Smith, Smoll, & Cummings, 2014; Vazou et al., 2006).

Keegan, Harwood, Spray, and Lavallee (2009) and Keegan, Spray,

Harwood, and Lavallee (2010) identified specific aspects of coach,

par-ent, and peer behavior that sampling (initiation and specialization)

ath-letes reported to be motivationally relevant. Their data suggested that

these young participants were quite aware of how these social agents

af-fected their motivation, and second, there was a vast array of behaviors

and interactions that were reported to be motivationally relevant. The

idea that the influences of social agents were related to the specific roles

they fulfill (teaching, supporting, co-operating) was prominent in their

findings. Coaches influence related most strongly to how they perform

their roles of instruction and assessment, whereas the parents’ influences

were most salient in terms of the way they supported participation and

learning. Parents and coaches were reported to be influential in terms of

their leadership styles, affective responses, and pre-performance

behav-iors. Peers were perceived to influence motivation via competitive

be-haviors, collaborative bebe-haviors, evaluative communication, and social

relationships (Keegan et al., 2009, 2010). Still, the relative influence of

these agents on the psychological development of youth athletes and

their continuation in sports has not been sufficiently studied. However, a

few studies have investigated the relative influence of goal orientations

and motivational climates concerning sport continuation. For example,

in a study that examined the influences of the task- and ego-involving

motivational climates (parent, coach, peer) and goal orientations in male

and female adolescent athletes' (judokas) continued participation in their

sport. Le Bars et al. (2009) found no significant relationship between

any of the ego-involving climate, ego goal orientation measures, and the

athletes' (M

age

, 17.9) persistence. Instead, the best predictor of whether

or not the athletes stayed involved in their sport was the extent to which

they perceived a task-involving peer climate.

In another study, Atkins, Johnson, Force, and Petrie (2013) examined

how the task-involving climates by peers and parents related to girls'

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(M

age

, 12.7) psychological well-being and their intention to continue

playing their sports. They found that parentally constructed, but not peer

created; task climates were related significantly to higher self-esteem,

more sports competence, and greater enjoyment when playing their best

sport; only enjoyment predicted the athletes' intention to continue

partic-ipating. The relationship between enjoyment and intention to continue in

their sport was also found in Atkins, Johnson, Force, and Petrie’s (2015)

study examining male adolescents’ (M

age

, 13.8).

Furthermore, they found that although perceived task-involving

par-ents-, peers, and coach-created motivational climate were associated

with the young male athletes’ task orientation, parents and peers were

the most influential. Related to this socialization of achievement goals,

Papaioannou, Ampatzoglou, Kalogiannis, and Sagovits, (2008)

exam-ined the impact of perceived social influence initiated by coaches,

moth-ers, and friends among 14-year-old and 11-year-old athletes. Although

they did not compare the difference between the two age groups, the

so-cial influences initiated by these three important soso-cial agents explained

a substantial amount of variance of the achievement goal orientations of

the athletes. More specifically, the perceived task-involving coach

cli-mate emerged as the most important predictor of mastery (task) goals. In

contrast, the perceived ego-involving climates by coaches, mothers, and

friends had all statistically significant positive influence on both

perfor-mance approach- and avoidance goals.

Longitudinal studies

An important issue is whether implicit beliefs about athletic ability and

goal orientations change and alter across the lifespan. Implicit theories

of ability were first viewed as relatively stable individual differences

(Dweck, 2000), and little was known about whether individuals change

the implicit theory they adopt in a particular domain. Dweck (2008) then

argued that beliefs could change because of socialization and

experienc-es. The few longitudinal studies regarding implicit theories of ability

have been conducted in a PE context (see Warburton & Spray, 2008,

2009, 2013). However, in these studies, the authors did not measure

changes in implicit theories of ability but instead used these variables to

predict changes in other motivation related variables (e.g., approach and

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avoidance goals). The arguments by Warburton and Spray (2009) for

conducting longitudinal studies in PE contexts – that it could be

reason-able that individuals may perceive a “ceiling” to the improvement of

ability – is valid also in sports. Athletes who highly endorsed

incremen-tal beliefs in their childhood/early adolescent years may, in later

adoles-cence, become less certain of the malleability of ability in sports. These

changes in the endorsement of implicit theories of ability could affect

the athlete’s experience in sports. For example, a shift towards

endors-ing entity beliefs could increase the athletes’ likelihood of adoptendors-ing

ego-oriented goals (Dweck, 2000).

According to the perspectives of Nicholls (1989) and Ames (1992a,

1992b), goal orientations may undergo substantial changes as a result

of situational demands and/or societal expectations. This approach

as-sumes that interactions with outside influences (e.g., parents, peers, and

coaches) help to mold and shape goal orientations. Thus, there may be

a maturing of achievement orientations as a result of interactions with

external sources. There is research suggesting that there are significant

decreases in students’ motivation to participate in school physical

edu-cation (PE) during the junior high school years and beyond. These

find-ings have been based on cross-sectional comparisons of different age

cohorts (e.g., Digelidis & Papaioannou, 1999), with limited evidence

derived from longitudinal studies (e.g., Barkoukis, Ntoumanis, &

Thøgersen-Ntoumanis, 2010; Papaioannou, Bebetsos, Theodorakis,

Christodoulidis, & Kouli, 2006).

The perceived motivational climate created by significant others may

represent a long-term socialization influence that can alter goal

orienta-tions over time, especially when individuals perceive the climate to be

in opposition to their achievement goal (e.g., Roberts & Treasure, 1992,

1995; Treasure & Roberts, 1995). To determine whether a shaping

ef-fect is occurring, some researchers have used longitudinal designs to test

this assertion. For example, Williams (1998) measured goal orientations

of adolescent female athletes enrolled in a competitive softball league to

see how they were influenced by perceptions of the motivational climate

at the beginning and end of an 8-week season. Task-and ego-involving

climates positively predicted late season task orientation after

account-ing for early-season task orientation. However, the perceptions of the

climate did not alter the players' ego orientation. In contrast, Whitehead,

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Andrée, and Lee (1997) examined the relationships between the

percep-tions of the motivational climate, dispositional goal orientapercep-tions,

per-ceived ability, and intrinsic motivation among track and field athletes

over two seasons. The findings indicated that a high perceived

task-involving climate in Year 1 predicted a decline in ego orientation in

Year 2; however, no relationship was noted for task orientation.

Gano-Overway and Ewing (2004) found that when a student possessed a high

task orientation and perceived a low task-involving climate, there was a

significant drop in task orientation across the semester-long physical

ac-tivity course. The same held true for those with a high ego orientation in

a low ego-involving climate. Additionally, when the goal orientation

was low and perceived motivational climate was high, there was a

sig-nificant increase in the corresponding goal orientation. Thus, when goal

and climate were incompatible, the situational factors appeared to

over-ride and drive the change in individual goal orientations. Similar

find-ings have been reported with young student-athletes (M

age

= 12.7) where

those who had a high task orientation and a low perceived

task-involving coach climate experienced a decrease in their task orientation

across their competitive season, and those who had low task orientation

and perceived a high task-involving coach climate demonstrated an

in-crease in their task orientation (Boyce, Gano-Overway, & Campbell,

2009). Additionally, Boyce et al. (2009) found similar patterns

regard-ing the ego-oriented variables. That is, a perceived high ego-involvregard-ing

coaching climate and low ego orientation resulted in an increase in ego

orientation and vice versa across the three measured time periods.

Alt-hough these studies preliminary support the shaping effect of the

moti-vational climate related to the compatibility of goals and climate,

longi-tudinal studies have also found no relationships between climates and

changes in athletes goal orientation (e.g., Conroy, Kaye, & Coatsworth,

2006). Further research is needed to explore this issue, particularly in

the athletic environment.

Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect

Depending on the frames of reference or standards of comparison

against which individuals evaluate themselves, the same objective

ac-complishment can lead to quite different self-concepts. It was against

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this backdrop that Marsh (1984; see also Marsh & Parker, 1984; Marsh

et al., 2008) proposed the Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE) as a

frame of reference model. In the BFLPE model, students are

hypothe-sized to compare their abilities with the abilities of their friends and/or

classmates and to use this social comparison impression as one basis for

forming their own self-concept. Individual ability is positively

associat-ed with academic self-concept (e.g., the more able I am, the higher my

concept). However, class- and school-average abilities hurt

self-concept (e.g., the more able my classmates are, the lower my academic

self-concept). Consequently, the self-concept depends not only on a

stu-dent’s own accomplishments but also on those of their classmates. For

example, it is probably better for academic self-concept to be a big fish

in a little pond (a gifted student in a regular reference group) than to be a

small fish in a big pond (a gifted student in a gifted reference group).

Although BFLPE has been questioned for disproportionately

empha-size on one aspect of social comparison (see Dai & Rinn, 2008), there is,

across diverse samples, ages, instruments, and designs, extensive

empir-ical support for the BFLPE in the academic domain (Marsh et al., 2008;

Nagengast & Marsh, 2012).

Regarding the sport and exercise context; Marsh, Perry, Horsely, and

Roche (1995) speculated that there might be a BFLPE affecting the

physical self-concepts of elite athletes participating in selective sports

programs. The BFLPE on physical self-concept has been tested in sport

and exercise settings, and findings have been consistent with BFLPE

predictions. For example, Marsh, Chanal, and Sarrazin (2006) found that

gymnastics self-concept was positively predicted by individual

gymnas-tics skills but was negatively predicted by class-average gymnasgymnas-tics

skills. Furthermore, both Beasley (2013) and Troutwein, Gerlach, and

Lüdtke (2008) found that class-average physical ability in physical

edu-cation classes hurt physical self-concept. In the study conducted by

Troutwein et al. (2008), the negative effect on physical self-concept also

led to subsequent declines in out-of-school physical activity. Beasley

(2013) also found that class type (single-sex vs. coeducational) did not

moderate (i.e., increase or decrease) BFLPE. Regarding being selected

to specific sports programs or selective high schools Marsh, Morin, and

Parker (2015) found in their longitudinal cohort study that physical

self-concepts at the start of high school were much higher for elite athletes

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than for nonathlete classmates. However, these differences declined

over time, resulting in no differences between the two groups at the end

of high school.

Athletic burnout

As argued by Eklund and DeFreese (2015), most athletes will not

expe-rience burnout in any meaningful degree in their sports endeavors.

However, it can be an important concern for the psychological health

and well-being of some athletes, especially those choosing to invest

in-tensely in their sport. To guide the work regarding burnout experiences

in athlete populations, Raedeke (1997) adapted the burnout definitions

from Maslach and Jackson’s (1986) multidimensional framework

result-ing in what is now a widely used conceptualizations of athlete burnout.

This conceptualization is a multidimensional cognitive-affective

syn-drome characterized by symptoms of emotional and physical

exhaus-tion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation (Raedeke,

1997; Raedeke & Smith, 2001, 2009). Although questioned (see

Gus-tafsson, Lundkvist, Podlog, & Lundqvist, 2016; Kristensen, Borritz,

Vil-ladsen, & Christensen, 2005; Shirom & Melamed, 2006), this

conceptu-alization is now the most widely used picture of athlete burnout (Eklund

& DeFreese, 2015). The critique refers to the lack of empirical evidence

showing that the three dimensions develop in parallel (Lee and Ashforth

1996; Martinent, Louvet, & Decret, 2016) and the definition is based

neither on clinical observations nor on theory. Instead, it has been

induc-tively developed using exploratory factor analysis (Lee & Ashforth

1990; Shirom & Melamed, 2006).

Feelings of emotional and physical fatigue caused by the

psychosocial and physical demands associated with training and

competing are the characteristics of emotional and physical

exhaustion. Feelings of ineffi-cacy and a tendency to evaluate oneself

negatively in terms of sports performance and accomplishments are

characteristics of a reduced sense of accomplishment. Sport devaluation

is defined as a negative, detached attitude towards sports, reflected by

a lack of concern regarding the sport itself and the athlete’s

performance quality. Exhaustion, both in sport and occupational

settings, is the core of the syndrome (Gustafsson et al., 2016; Maslach,

Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001).

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Athlete burnout should not be considered as a static state (i.e., being

or not being burned out). Instead, it should be understood as the process

in which the athlete’s experiential state regarding the three constructs

gradually develop over time (Raedeke & Smith, 2001).

The situation sports, perhaps more specifically elite sports, have some

unique features that should be taken under consideration regarding the

development of athlete burnout. The first feature is the high

physiologi-cal stress associated with training that is for many athletes a central part

of the everyday life (Smith, 2003). The second feature is that athletes

are continuously seeking to improve their performance and,

additional-ly, are evaluated continuously during competition and training, which

can be stressful. This fact is especially true if the athlete or the team

does not perform as expected or if the athlete has a personality- or goal

orientation that is based on dependency, the judgment of external

evalu-ations of his/her performance (e.g., Lemyre, Hall, & Roberts, 2008).

Commitment is, according to Durand-Bush, Salmela, and

Green-Demers (2001), considered a hallmark of athletic success. However,

when athletes are burned out, this commitment could gradually develop

into the opposite, a lack of commitment, which might result in athletes

dropping out of sport altogether (Gustafsson, Kenttä, & Hassmén,

2011). Even though commitment in sports is desirable, it appears that

people with only commitment are vulnerable. Thus, the great

enthusi-asm and striving found in many young prospering athletes can develop

into a maladaptive attribute and lead to a loss of enthusiasm. Therefore,

knowledge and understanding of the environment of elite sports, sports

programs, or sports schools and the stressors that athletes are exposed to

must be considered because contextual factors are considered the most

prominent causes of the development of burnout (DeFreese, Smith, &

Raedeke, 2015).

Gender as a social institution

Lorber (1994) sees gender as a social institution that establishes patterns

of expectations for individuals and orders the social processes of the

everyday. A reason why gender is often assumed to have a biological

origin and why differences between women and men are perceived as

natural is that when we are born, we have already entered into a

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gen-dered structure of life, culture, and society. The “paradox” referred to by

Lorber (1994) is that, despite men and women being very similar,

gen-der as a social institution continues to create and maintain socially

sig-nificant differences between women and men. In the social construction

of gender, it does not matter which behaviors men and women actually

exhibit, the social institution of gender only insists that what they do is

perceived as different. However, the differentiation per se is not

neces-sarily problematic, according to Lorber (1994), but stratifying men and

women are. In a society stratified by gender, men are usually more

high-ly valued than women. Lorber argues that since sports, is traditionalhigh-ly, a