Motivation has been a very important object of study among sports and exercise psychologists. Achievement Goal Theory (Nicholls, 1989) and Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985; 1991; 2000; Ryan and Deci, 2000) are the most prominent current theories of motivation in the sport psychology literature and each has had considerable success in explaining motivational patterns in sport settings. According to Achievement Goal Theory, individuals can define success according to different criteria that reflects two different perspectives. The first achievement goal perspective is self- referenced and reflects a task goal orientation in which individuals consider themselves to be successful when they have demonstrated personal improvement and have displayed effort. The second achievement goal perspective reflects a social comparison perspective in which success is considered to be realized when individuals demonstrate superior skills relative to others. Such a perspective is known as an ego orientation. At around the age of 12 years, these goal orientations tend to become consolidated in the individual’s personality (Nicholls, 1989). Coaches can be important influences in shaping the achievement goal orientations of athletes. Their influence can be reflected in the manner in which coaches respond during training sessions and competition in relation to the implicit and explicit responses that they provide in relation to the coach’s own definition of success. A coach can either prioritise personal improvement and effort in task execution, which would reflect a task-involving climate or give more importance to winning and the demonstration of a greater ability than others, which be would reflective of an ego-involving climate. Self-Determination Theory establishes different motivational types along a continuum. Consequently, individuals can be unmotivated (amotivation) or can range in self- determination from less self-determined to more self-determined. Amotivation refers to a lack of intention or the absence of motivation and therefore the involvement is likely to be disorganised and accompanied by frustration, fear or depressed feelings (i.e. “I don’t really think my place is in sport”). On the self-determination continuum there are various points on the continuum that distinguish between individuals in their levels of self-determination. External regulation refers to of the motive to participate to attain external incentives (i.e. “I do sports for the prestige of being an athlete”). Introjected regulation reflects motivation dictated by the desire to avoid culpability and to minimize anxiety feelings (i.e. “I must do sports to feel good about myself”). In the case of identified regulation, the activity is more important for the individual although s/he doesn’t carry out this activity because of its inherent pleasure, but as a means of achieving a goal, such as improving their health. Integrated regulation consists of assimilating and organising several identified regulations, evaluating them and classifying them in relation to other values and needs. A clear example of this would be an individual committed to the practice of physical activity because this involvement reflects his/her orientation toward a healthy lifestyle. This type of regulation is more often encountered among adults rather than children, as younger populations may be too young to have experienced a sense of integration (Vallerand and Rousseau, 2001). Intrinsic motivation involves participating in an activity for the pleasure and the enjoyment they get from it. Intrinsic motivation describes the inclination towards consolidation, mastery, spontaneous interest and exploration. This inclination is fundamental for social and cognitive development and represents the main origin of pleasure and vitality all throughout life (Ryan, 1995). Pelletier et al., 1995 proposed three types of intrinsic motivation, called “intrinsic motivation to know ”(practising a sport for the pleasure of knowing more about such sport), “intrinsic motivation to accomplish ”(practising a sport for the pleasure of improving skills) and “intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation ”(practising a sport for the pleasure of living stimulating experiences). The majority of investigations carried out have examined different motivational types including their antecedents and their consequences in an isolated way (Ntoumanis, 2002). Findings have tended to indicate that the most self-determined motivational types (i.e. intrinsic motivation and identified regulation) are connected with the most positive consequences (Vallerand and Rousseau, 2001) in relation to various outcomes such as affect (pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction, interest, positive emotions, better coping abilities and flow), cognitions (concentration) and behavioural outcomes (effort, intentions to continue exercising, sportspersonship and actual performance). In this sense, Vallerand (1997; 2001) proposed an analysis of how the motivation types established by the Self-Determination Theory are combined to form motivational profiles. Vallerand (1997; 2001) suggested studying how the different motivation types occur jointly in individuals by identifying groups of individuals with similar scores and further examining the different social factors which determine those profiles, as well as the outcomes that accompany each profile. This approach allows identification of profiles related to the most negative consequences, with the aim of developing strategies to increase the strength and quality of such individuals’ motivation towards sports (Vlachopoulos et al., 2000). Fox et al., 1994 suggested using the motivational profile approach to study goal orientations and their consequences. Research shows that individuals with high task and ego orientations, which is customary among elite athletes (Hardy et al., 1996), as well as individuals with high task orientations and low ego orientations tend to show higher levels of adaptive motivational patterns as reflected by hard work, intrinsic interest, enjoyment and higher persistence in practice despite getting not necessarily better results than those with a low task orientation (Dorobantu and Biddle, 1997; Goudas et al., 1994; Roberts et al., 1996; Standage and Treasure, 2002). Therefore, identifying subgroups of young people showing different profiles based on these contemporary motivational rates could be quite useful in increasing the effectiveness of interventions and in realizing greater participation (Wang and Biddle, 2001). Some investigators have already undertaken the study of motivational profiles for individuals in different contexts, such as the research conducted by Vlachopoulos et al., 2000 carried out with adult athletes and Wang and Biddle’s (2001) research with adolescent students with reference both to Physical Education lessons and sport. Ntoumanis, 2002 examined motivational profiles in Physical Education lessons with students between the ages of 14 and 16 years old. More recently, Matsumoto and Takenaka, 2004 studied adults practising and not practising physical activity and McNeill and Wang, 2005 examined motivational profiles in young people between the ages of 14 and 15 years who practised or did not practise sport. Each of these studies were grounded in Self-Determination Theory and some of them also used Achievement Goal Theory, in both cases trying to establish a relation between the different profiles and specific social factors (such as motivational climates) and concrete consequences, such as interest, effort, satisfaction, enjoyment, boredom, level of participation in the physical activity and self-worth. The combined results from these studies indicates that individuals who have profiles with high scores on self-determined motivation tend to view their involvement as occurring within a task-involving climate and generally realize the most positive consequences. In the present study, the motivational profile approach was used in which the primary constructs from Self-Determination Theory and Achievement Goal Theory were related to dispositional flow in a sample of adolescent athletes. Dispositional flow reflects the individual’s tendency to experience an optimal psychological, or flow state. According to Csikszentmihalyi, 1988, there are individual differences in the capacity to experience this state and, as a result, some individuals are more prone to experience this state and thus have what is known as an autotelic personality. Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999 consider flow to be a conscious state that is experienced in a wide range of contexts and which has universal characteristics where the individual is totally absorbed by what he or she is doing. Therefore, the flow state would synonymous with heightened concentration and it would also be a harmonious experience where mind and body work together, leaving the individual with the feeling that something special had happened. The flow state is also inherently enjoyable. It could be argued that flow raises the quality of the experience from ordinary to optimal and it is at this point when the individual feels truly active and connected with what he or she is doing. Given the very positive features of this experience, it is therefore highly interesting to analyse the factors that lead to the athlete’s greater disposition to experience flow and, in this way, design training environments fostering the accomplishment of optimal experiences so as to achieve higher adherence to practice and better execution. Recent investigations indicate that many young athletes tend to give up sport practice during adolescence (Wang et al., 2007). It is therefore essential to assess the factors related to sports motivation at this age so as to better understand the variables underlying sports commitment in order to gain the benefits obtained from sport at physical (i.e. physical development), psychological (i.e. higher concentration and less anxiety) and social levels (i.e. sport as a medium of social relationships). Moreover, the attitudes developed towards sport practice at this stage will have a strong influence at the adult stage (Malina, 2001). No published works have been found regarding motivational profiles in adolescent athletes. The only known work that uses this approach with athletes, albeit with adult, is that by Vlachopoulos et al., 2000. Vlachopoulos et al., 2000 built on work from Vallerand and Fortier, 1998 that examined possible relationships between self-determined and non-self-determined motivation types. Vlachopoulos et al., 2000 established four theoretical motivational profiles: the traditional self-determined profile, represented by individuals with high levels of self-determined motivation and low non-self-determined motivation; a second profile in which individuals have high scores both in self-determined and in non-self-determined motivation; a third profile in which individuals have high scores only in non-self-determined types of motivation; and a fourth profile in which individuals have low scores in both motivation types. In their investigation only the first two profiles were present because the other two are more associated with sport abandonment which was not representative of their sample. In the present study, it was hypothesized that a self-determined profile would be related to a high task orientation, a task-involving climate perception and dispositional flow. This study is unique in that it utilized a motivational profile approach with adolescents, which is a particularly important developmental phase in relation to motivation whereas most previous research has utilised adult athletes as their sample. |