Relationships Between Self-Determined Motivation and Developmental Outcomes in Sport-Based Positive Youth Development

Abstract

Building on self-determination theory, this study examined the relationships between self-determined motivation toward sport participation and developmental outcomes in sport-based positive youth development. One hundred twenty participants in a sport-based positive youth development program designed to engage youth through running completed a postprogram survey measuring their self-determined motivation toward running and achievement of developmental outcomes. The results of regression analyses indicated that participants with higher self-determined motivation toward running reported higher general self-efficacy, more positive attitudes toward a healthy lifestyle, and lower engagement in threatening behavior. On the other hand, self-determined motivation was unrelated to self-reported academic performance.

Notes

Although the value of.65 is lower than the.70 benchmark implied by Nunnally (1978), a lower coefficient alpha is not necessarily associated with low reliability for scales that have a minimal number of items (Cortina, 1993). For this study, a follow-up principle component analysis revealed that the three items loaded on a single component within this sample. In particular, the principal component analysis extracted only one component with an eigenvalue greater than 1 (1.77), and this component explained 59.0% of the total variance in the three items for general self-efficacy. In addition, all of the three items had a loading of at least.73, indicating that the component was strongly correlated with all items (the loading values ranged from.73 to.80). Therefore, although the relatively low reliability is a potential limitation of this study, it should not severely affect the results of hypothesis testing.