Central Annals of Sports Medicine and Research

Cite this article: Marchetti R, Pesce C, Forte R, Goudas M, Danish SJ (2016) When Preadolescents Perceive Emotional, Cognitive, and Social Life Skills: The Role of Dispositional Goal Orientations and Situational Climate in Sport. Ann Sports Med Res 3(8): 1090.

*Corresponding authorCaterina Pesce, Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, Italian University Sport and Movement, Piazza Lauro De Bosis, 15, I - 00135 Rome, Italy, Tel: +39-06-36733366; Fax: +39-06-36733362; Email:

Submitted: 01 June 2016

Accepted: 12 October 2016

Published: 14 October 2016

ISSN: 2379-0571

Copyright© 2016 Pesce et al.

OPEN ACCESS

Keywords•Motivation•Youths•Coach•Parents•Positive development

Abstract

This study examined the contribution of dispositional and situational motivational factors in sport and family settings to life skills of youths practicing sport. One hundred and seventy-seven junior-high school students aged 11-12 years were recruited and 136, identified as eligible, were administered questionnaires evaluating dispositional goal orientations in sport, coach-initiated and parents-initiated motivational climate, and perceived life skills in the emotional, cognitive and social domains. Moderated regression analyses were conducted to analyse the independent and joint contribution of dispositional and situational motivation factors to life skills. Both task-involving and ego-involving factors independently and inversely predicted emotional and cognitive skills. Task-involving factors positively predicted life skills in all three domains and buffered the negative prediction of social skills accrued by ego orientation. The results contribute furthering our understanding of the relationship linking motivation in youth sport to different facets of the life skills construct, with task-involving factors beneficial to life skills being mainly situational in nature and ego-involving factors detrimental to life skills being mainly dispositional. Conclusions are drawn referring to an integrative view on dispositional and situational motivation factors and to a conceptual model of life skills development that integrates relevant features of a needs-supportive motivational climate.

Short Communication

When Preadolescents Perceive Emotional, Cognitive, and Social Life Skills: The Role of Dispositional Goal Orientations and Situational Climate in SportRosalba Marchetti1, Caterina Pesce1*, Roberta Forte1, Marios Goudas2, and Steve J. Danish3

1Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, Italian University Sport and Movement, Italy2Department of Physical Education and Sport Science, University of Thessaly, Greece3Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

ABBREVIATIONSAGT: Achievement Goal Theory; IPAQ-A: International

Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents; MET: Metabolic Equivalent of Task; TEOSQ: Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire; PMCSQ-2; Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire-2; PIMCQ-2: Parent-Initiated Motivational Climate Questionnaire-2

INTRODUCTIONSport provides a context for positive youth development

[1], where youngsters may learn life skills [2,3], such as setting goals and overcoming the obstacles to their attainment, solving problems and thinking positively (cognitive skills), handling effectively success and failure and performing under pressure (emotional skills), communicating and acting effectively within a team (social skills)[4]. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that sport activities per se do not necessarily support life skills development, but only if content and delivery are tailored to facilitate personal development [5]. Indeed, sports coaches are

acknowledged to play a critical role in positive youth development [6], but whether and how they can attain enhancements of life skills of youth sport participants depends on factors that are still issue of debate [7]. Relevant factors seem to be coaching strategies and the way in which coaches motivate young athletes, evaluating and recognizing effort and achievement [2].

Focusing on the relation between life skills and achievement goals can provide further insight to inform effective sports coaching strategies for personal development. Within the influential framework of the Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) [8], two main dispositional achievement-related goal patterns have been identified: a task (or mastery) and an ego (or performance) goal orientation [9,10]. AGT posits that whether an individual in a specific situation tends to use self-referenced or normative criteria (task and ego orientation, respectively) is influenced by the motivational climate created by significant others such as coaches and parents. This can be task-involving, emphasizing mastery goals, effort and individual progress, or ego-involving, emphasizing performance goals, interpersonal comparison and

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rivalry. Both task orientation and task-involving motivational climate result positively related to adaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioral outcomes [9,11].

Given the call for sports studies linking motivation factors to the broader spectrum of life skills [12], the aim of the present study was to examine, from an achievement goal perspective [10], what kind of individual goal orientations and motivational climate in sport are beneficially or detrimentally predictive of youngsters’ emotional, cognitive, and social life skills. We also accounted for the role played by the motivational climate generated by parents, who are significant others in the most proximal social environment providing support in youth sport [13]. Moreover, since goal orientations are orthogonal in nature, individual task and ego orientation, along with situational climate variables, may interactively predict psychological outcomes [14]. Thus, we applied an interactionist approach to the study of sport-related dispositional goal orientations and situational motivation factors [9] to investigate if they independently or interactively predict life skills in different domains.

MATERIALS AND METHODSThe study was authorized by the Ethics Committee of the

“Umberto I” hospital of the First Rome University, the Committees of the schools involved and students’ parents, who gave written informed consent.

Participants

A sample of 177 junior-high school students aged 11-12 years (98 males and 79 females),belonging to four schools stratified by urban district, volunteered to participate in the study. The average years of past sport practice was 3.7 (SD 2.3) and the weekly frequency of actual practice was at least twice/week, as assessed by means of a questionnaire composed of closed-response items [15]. Total physical activity was in average 630 (SD 417) MET-minutes per day. Time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was 74 minutes (SD 51) per day, as assessed with the International Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (IPAQ-A) [16], with 49% of the sample reaching the recommended standard of 60 min/day.

One hundred and thirty-six students met the selection criteria of practicing sport, having both parents and no known mental disease. We administered questionnaires evaluating dispositional and situational motivational factors (individual goal orientations in sport and trainer/parents-initiated motivational climate) and self-beliefs in life skills (in the cognitive, emotional, and social domains).

Motivational Factors Assessment

Individual goal orientations in sport: The Italian version [17] of the 13-item Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) [18] was employed. It is composed of two scales: task orientation and ego orientation. Cronbach’s alpha was .882 and .828 for task and ego orientation, respectively.

Motivational Climate initiated by coach and parents: The 8-item, short version [19] of the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire [20] (PMCSQ-2, in Italian by Simbula and Guicciardi [21]) was used. It is composed of two scales of coach-

initiated climate: task/mastery and ego/performance climate in sport. Cronbach’s alpha was .689 and .766, respectively.

The 18-item Parent-Initiated Motivational Climate Questionnaire (PIMCQ-2) [22], to be answered separately by both parents, was used. It comprises three scales: (a) success-without-effort (i.e., a climate promoting performance-approach goals with low effort), (b) worry-conducive (i.e., a climate of intransigence towards errors promoting performance-avoidance goals) and (c) learning/enjoyment (i.e., a climate of task enjoyment stimulating learning).

Life Skills Assessment

Self-evaluation of cognitive life skills was performed by means of the 14-item Life Skills Self-Beliefs questionnaire [23], composed of three scales: (a) goal setting, (b) problem solving, and (c) positive thinking. Emotional life skills were evaluated by means of two subscales of the Perceived Self-Efficacy Questionnaire for School Age [24]: (a) expression of positive emotions (7 items), (b) management of negative emotions (8 items). Cronbach’s alpha was .800 (a) and .826 (b). Social life skills were evaluated with a corresponding 13-item scale of the same questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha was .868 (c).

Validation Analyses

The PIMCQ-2 and the Life Skills Self Beliefs test were translated into Italian and back-translated and administered to samples of 263 and 365 11-15 year-old students, respectively, recruited from Northern and Southern Italian regions. The highly correlated data of mother- and father-initiated climate were collapsed into mean parents’ score.

Both Cronbach’s alpha (>.80) and mean item-scale correlation (>.60) indicated a good internal consistency of both questionnaires. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) showed a good fit of the actual measurement to the 3-factor model of both questionnaires (factor loadings > .40; Comparative Fit Index > .90; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation < .05) after freeing error covariances with highest modification indices (MIs). As regards test-retest reliability of both questionnaires, evaluated on data collected one week apart, the range of intra-class correlation was good (> .70) to very good (> .80) and the range Pearson’s product-moment correlation was moderate (> .50) to good (> .70).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Preliminary Analyses: Correlations and Variable Selection

The two scales of ‘expression of positive emotions’ and ‘management of negative emotions’ were averaged to obtain a summary score of ‘emotional life skills’ and the three scales of the Life Skill Self-Beliefs (‘goal setting’, ‘problem solving’, ‘positive thinking’) were averaged to obtain a summary score of ‘cognitive life skills’. Means and SDs for measures of dispositional and situational motivational factors and self-beliefs in emotional, cognitive, and social life skills domains and their intercorrelations (Pearson’s r) are presented in Table (1).

Each life skill score (emotional, cognitive, social skills)

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served as a dependent variable in separate hierarchical multiple regressions performed to analyze the relations between motivational factors and life skills. To test not only the independent, but also the interactive prediction of life skills accrued by sport-related dispositional and situational motivational factors, moderated hierarchical regression analyses were run. Preliminarily, we computed the interaction term Task x Ego, as well as pairwise products of each goal orientation and coach-initiated motivational climate variable to enter these interaction terms as further predictors in a second block after the dispositional and the coach-initiated situational variables. Adding the interaction terms to the model yielded a significant increase in the variance explained (R2) for social life skills only. Variables, which failed to contribute as main or interactive predictors were removed from the regression model for the final regression analyses to be run [14].

Main Analyses: Associations between Motivational Factors and Life Skills

In the final regression analyses, we evaluated the influence of the sport-related motivational factors of interest after controlling statistically for the prediction accrued by motivational factors in the family environment. This hierarchical regression model allowed to identify the contribution that sport-specific motivational factors can add to the explanation of life skills in youths beyond the role of the motivational climate at home. With forced entry method, parents-initiated motivational climate variables (learning/enjoyment, worry-conducive, success-without-effort) were entered in the first block and the individual goal orientations in sport (task, ego) and coach-initiated motivational climate (mastery, performance) in the second block. According to the results of the preliminary regression, interaction terms (Task x Ego; Task x Performance Climate) were entered in a third block for social life skills only. A mixed role of task- and ego-involving factors emerged (Table 2).

The synoptic representation in Figure (1) shows that ego-involving, negative predictors of life skills are mainly dispositional in nature, whereas task-involving, positive predictors are primarily situational in nature. Moreover, life skills in different domains are differently associated with task-involving and ego-

involving factors, suggesting the need for an articulated approach to coaching and parenting strategies.

A family environment focused on the value of learning and enjoyment seems a relevant contributor to life skills in youths. Parents who reinforce, also in the sport context, learning from one’s mistakes and enjoying effort and self-improvement seem to be supportive of youngsters’ skill in expressing and managing emotions and handling social relationships. Beyond this motivational influence of parents on skills that are relevant in achievement settings [25], sport-related motivation factors resulted to provide an independent contribution to the broad spectrum of life skills.

Emotional skills seem negatively affected by an individual ego orientation. This is consistent with research suggesting that ego goals in physical activity and sport are linked to emotional maladjustment [26] and toa wide range of negative activating (e.g., anxiety) or deactivating emotions (e.g., hopelessness) [11, 27]. Parallel to a high individual ego orientation, also the perception that the training environment is focused on performance goals and the coach reinforces rivalry seems detrimental to youths’ management of emotions.

Cognitive skills seem also dampened by an ego orientation, but promoted by sports coaches who focus on and reinforce mastery goals. Indeed, highly ego-oriented youths practicing sport seem to scarcely rely on psychological skills as goal setting and positive self-talk as compared to their less ego-oriented counterparts [28]. Moreover, ego orientation in sport has been linked to negative outcomes as avoidance of challenging tasks that are perceived as difficult [29], reflecting its detrimental effect on the ability to set and pursue appropriate goals, find solutions to emerging problems, and think positively also under difficult circumstances.

Nevertheless, studies on youth goal profiles suggest that a relatively high level of ego orientation is not maladaptive per se and predictive of emotional maladjustment or low use of cognitive skills if coupled with a high task orientation [27, 28]. In our study, this buffering effect of a high task orientation emerged for social skills, for which task-involving factors also played a major predictive role (Figure 2). Post-hoc simple slope testing of the small, but significant prediction of social skills accrued by the

Table 1: Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations between measured variables.

Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Task Orientation 4.1 0.7 1

2. Ego Orientation 3.3 0.8 -.20* 1

3. Mastery-Coach 4.2 0.7 .50*** -.08 1

4. Performance-Coach 2.1 0.8 -.29** -.20* -.35*** 1

5.Learning/Enjoyment Parents 4.1 0.7 .47*** .005 .46*** -.25** 1

6. Worry Conducive-Parents 1.7 0.8 -.31*** -.17* -.36*** .40*** -.46*** 1

7.Success without Effort-Parents 2.5 0.9 -.12 -.24** -.12 .33*** -.02 .29** 1

8. Emotional Skills 3.7 0.5 .22** -.21* .26** -.26** .31*** -.23** -.05 1

9. Cognitive Skills 3.5 0.6 .24** -.33*** .30** -.08 .17* -.10 -.09 1

10. Social Skills 3.9 0.5 .49*** -.25** .44*** -.12 .39*** -.20* -.09 .57*** .46*** 1

Note.* p < .05, ** p < .01, ***p < .001

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Table 2: Final model of moderated hierarchical regression analysis of emotional, cognitive, and social skills as a function of parents-initiated motivational climate and sport-related motivational factors (individual goal orientation and coach-initiated motivational climate in sport).

PredictorEmotional

SkillsCognitive

SkillsSocial Skills

ΔR2 β ΔR2 β ΔR2 βStep 1 .13 .03 .19

Learning and Enjoyment .17* .11 .19**

Worry Conducive -.06 -.06 -.05

Success without Effort -.04 -.04 -.06

Step 2 .12 .16 .13

Task Orientation .05 .05 .15*

Ego Orientation -.16** -.24*** -.09

Mastery Climate (Coach) .05 .17* .16*

Performance Climate (Coach) -.15** -.04 -.01

Step 3 .05

Task x Ego Orientation .13*

Task Orientation x Performance Climate -.13*

Total R2 .25 .19 .37

Adjusted R2 .22 .15 .33Note.* p < .05, ** p < .01, ***p < .001Abbreviations: ΔR2 = difference value between total R-squared and R-squared of the preceding block(s)

Figure 1 Synoptic representation of the individual and joint prediction of life skills accrued by dispositional and situational motivational factors. Standardized beta coefficients (β) are reported.

Figure 2 Results of simple slope tests showing the prediction of social life skills accrued by dispositional ego orientation, moderated by task orientation. Task, Ego: task and ego orientation.

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interaction terms showed significant differences as regards the Task x Ego, but not the Task x Performance Climate interaction. Figure (2) shows the main, positive effect of task orientation on social life skills, as well as its role as moderator that buffers the negative influence of being ego-oriented.

Studies with youth athletes have consistently reported positive behavioural outcomes of a high task orientation in the social domain, as better social relationships and peer acceptance [9]. Both individual and situational task orientation have relevant social outcomes, since mastery goals clearly lead to active efforts for integrating difference of opinions and building team cohesion and cooperative group relations [30, 31]. Based on our results, we speculate that underlying mechanisms might be social life skills promoted by task-involving motivational factors.Social skills resulted favoured by task orientation and a task-involving climate at home and in the sport setting. Youths are more confident in their social skills if they interact with coaches and parents who emphasize the importance of working hard, learning and enjoying improvement. This result is in line with the relevant role played by social agents in determining whether and how youths learn life skills through sport participation [32].

CONCLUSIONThe present study contributed furthering our understanding

of the relationship linking motivational climate to life skills that has been claimed relevant from a theoretical perspective on needs-supportive motivational climate and life skills [3, 12] and a practical perspective on developmental health outcomes of sport participation [33]. The findings suggest the independent, significant contribution of sport coaching and parenting strategies that minimize social comparison, advocate cooperation and personal criteria for success and emphasize mistakes being part of learning.

The present study has limitations. First, the correlational nature of the study does not allow making conclusive inference of a causal relationship between motivational factors and life skills. Second, the present finding of a negative role of performance climate for emotional life skills must be interpreted cautiously. According to the revised achievement goal perspective, a performance climate might not be detrimental as far as the focus is on performance-approach (i.e., attaining normative competence) and not performance-avoidance goals (i.e., avoiding normative incompetence) [34]. Third, results supporting the interactionist perspective were limited to the social life skills domain, probably due to the intrinsically low power of this type of moderated hierarchical regression analysis [9]. However, the independent contribution of dispositional and situational factors confirms the informative value of investigations including both types of motivational factors. This kind of results can assist in the improvement of coaching strategies for life skills training through sport and calls for future research on the role that achievement goals and motivational climate can play for holistic life skills development in youth sport [3].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWe thank Carlo Minganti for his help in conducting

preliminary CFA.

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Marchetti R, Pesce C, Forte R, Goudas M, Danish SJ (2016) When Preadolescents Perceive Emotional, Cognitive, and Social Life Skills: The Role of Dispositional Goal Orientations and Situational Climate in Sport. Ann Sports Med Res 3(8): 1090.

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