Relationships Among Motivational Climate, Satisfaction, Perceived Ability, and Fair Play Attitudes in Young Soccer Players

Abstract

The present study examined relationships among perceptions of motivational climate, perceived ability, satisfaction and fair play attitudes in young soccer players. Participants were 472 male Catalan players (from 10 to 14 years). Results indicated that perceptions of a task-involving climate were positively associated with satisfaction in practices and self-referenced perceived ability and were inversely related to rough play attitudes and normative perceived ability. In addition, perceptions of an ego-involving motivational climate were related positively with normative perceived ability and with favorable attitudes towards winning in a soccer game. The differences across motivational climate profiles groups revealed that the highest level of acceptance of rough play was found in the subgroup with a low-task/high-ego orientation. In contrast, the lowest level of acceptance of rough play was found in the opposite subgroup of high-task/low-ego. The findings support the importance of creating a task-involving climate in sports.

This work has been funded partly with grants BSO2003-04301 and BSO2001-2518 from Plan Nacional of I + D.

The authors would like to thank Robert Brustad and Glyn Roberts, two anonymous reviewers, and the Associate Editor for their helpful comments and suggestions to the final manuscript. Any errors or faults, however, remain our own.

Notes

∗∗p < 0.01.

∗p < 0.05.