Adolescent Athletes’ Motivation in Track and Field: A Sarawakian-Malaysian Perspective


Ngien Siong Chin1 and Eng Wah Teo2

1 Tun Abdul Razak Teachers' Education Institute, Sarawak, Malaysia, 2. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL

Introduction

  • Motivation plays a vital role in determining why, when and how individuals engage in a preferred physical activities, at the same time, affecting the quality and outcome of one's engagement.
  • Motivation to perform is essential towards the success of the individual and team sports. In the sporting world, the aim to maximize motivation has long been of interest to many sports researchers (Duda & Nicholls, 1989; Pelletier, Fortier, Vallerand, Tuson, Briere & Blais, 1995).
  • The self-determination theory (SDT), a contemporary meta-theory is commonly uses to enhance better understanding of individual's motivation towards volitional behaviours especially in the realm of sports and physical education (Ryan & Deci, 2002).
  • In the context of this study, "athletics" refers to track and field. The term "sports" encompasses all competitive activities, regardless of the level of physical activities. And "physical education" refers to physical education programs, classes and activities engage in middle and high schools.

 

Purpose

  • to examine intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation in terms of gender
  • to examine intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation in terms of age group (13-15 vs. 16-18 years old)
  • to examine intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation in terms locality (urban vs. rural)




 

Method Subjects

  • 632 athletes (349 males, 283 females) with a mean age of 15+ 1.28 years were recruited voluntarily during the annual Sarawak state track and field meet.
  • Purposive sampling method was used to recruit our subjects

 

Table 1 presents a detailed break-down of socio-demographic characteristics of the participants.

 



 


 


 

Procedures


  • The Sport Motivation Scale (SMS) measure showed good validity and reliability with overall Cronbach's alpha of .58- .92 (Alexandris, Tsorbatzoudis & Grouis, 2002; Brière, Vallerand, Blais, & Pelletier, 1995 ;Pelletier et al., 1995).
  • The 28-item Malaysia version of the Sport Motivation Scale (Teo, 2006; Chin & Teo, 2008) with seven subscales [intrinsic motivation (3), extrinsic motivation (3) and amotivation (1)] was administered to measure for different types of motivation among athletes.
  • The SMS-Malaysian questionnaire were distributed after the track and field meet and collected promptly after 30 minutes.

Results


 

  • Independent sample t-test was utilized to determine fordifferences between motivation among genders, agegroups and locality. The independent t-test revealed thatthere was a significant difference between sex (p < .05) andlocality in intrinsic motivation.
  • Males athletes were more intrinsically motivated (5.01 ± 0.87) than female athletes (4.72 ± 0.92).
  • However male athletes were also extrinsically motivated (4.82 ± 0.89) than female athletes (4.32 ± 0.95).
  • In addition, urban athletes showed higher intrinsic motivation at 5.05 ± 0.94 compared to athletes from rural area (4.83 ± 0.89).
  • Data analysis further revealed that amotivation of male athletes were (4.01 ± 1.06) significantly higher than that of female athletes (3.75 ± 1.09).
Table 2: Types of motivation by sex, age group and locality.




Discussion


 

Intrinsic

  • Male athletes who are intrinsically motivated could have found participation in athletics more interesting, enjoyable and satisfying compared to female athletes. Our result concurs with similar studies (Amorose & Horn, 2000; Biddle & Armstrong, 1992).
Extrinsic

  • The results also revealed that male athletes were more extrinsically motivated than female athletes. This implied that the competitive environment which is based onnormative comparison and outcomes may induce male athletes to be extrinsically motivated.
  • The results supported previous studies that showed male tends to display a less self-determined motivational profile than females (Hsiung, 2000; Ntoumanis, 2005; Wagner, Lounsbery & Fitzgerald, 1989).
 Amotivation
  • The results showed a significant difference in amotivation among male and female athletes.
  • Male athletes reported higher amotivation than female athletes due to the imposition of extrinsic constraints and contingencies which are based on performance and outcome that significant others establish in their-preparation of the athletes for competition where winning and outcome of sporting events is paramount.
  • The performance-related environment which is controlling and demanding in which male athletes are expected to meet would lead to the feeling amotivated (Naylor, 2006).
Conclusions

  • Male athletes were more intrinsically, extrinsically and amotivates than female athletes.
  • In addition, urban athletes are more intrinsically motivated than rural athletes.
  • In conclusion, the results of the study provide additional information about sex, age and locality differences in types of motivation in a traditional male-dominated domain in track and field from the Malaysian (Sarawak) perspective.
Reference

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collegiate athletes' gender, scholarship status, and perceptions of their
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Exercise Psychology , 11, 318–335.
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Educational Psychology, 97, 444-453.
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Psychologist, 55, 68-78.
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in Kuala Lumpur. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Malaya, Kuala
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