Browsing by Author "Hirvonen, Olli"

Previous studies have shown that there is a link between personal achievement goal orientation, intrinsic motivation and teams motivational climate in youth sports The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of relationships can be observed between players' goal orientation and team motivational climate in children's and adolescents' football teams. The second objective is to examine what differences in goal orientation and motivational climate can be detected between teams by grouping respondents by gender, age and team level. The aim is also to investigate the goal orientation profile groups that respondents form and to analyse the ranking of team players in these groups and the relationship between goal orientation profile groups and team motivational climate. The survey involved 94 respondents (72 boys and 22 girls) aged between 9 and 17 years (average age 12.67 years). Responses were collected via an online questionnaire between April and May 2021. All respondents belonged to the same football club in Southern Finland. Differences between groups were examined using the non-parametric Kruskall-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. K-means cluster analysis was used to form achievement goal orientation profile groups. Statistically significant correlations between the different dimensions of goal orientation and motivational climate were found in the data. Statistically significant differences were found between gender, age groups and between teams at different levels. Three groups of goal orientation profiles were identified from the data: task-oriented, task- and achievement-oriented, and disengaged. The links between goal orientation and motivational climate were also reflected in the team-level analysis of players' goal orientation profiles and the motivational climate within the team. Task orientation and task climate were strong throughout the data, but perceived autonomy was rather weak. Based on the results, it would be worthwhile to investigate what means could be used to support perceived autonomy.