Predictors of sources of self-confidence in collegiate athletes

Abstract

The present study examined the antecedents of athletes' reliance on Vealey's nine sources of confidence. Achievement goal-orientation, perfectionism, coach-induced motivational climates were examined as predictors. Sources of confidence were categorized into controllable (e.g. mastery) and uncontrollable (e.g. situational favorableness) sources of confidence. Past research indicated that controllable sources of confidence are critical for enduring levels of confidence. Participants in the present study included 206 intercollegiate athletes. Path analysis showed that adaptive perfectionism positively predicted both controllable and uncontrollable sources of confidence, whereas maladaptive perfectionism positively only predicted uncontrollable sources of confidence. Ego-goal orientation and ego-involving motivational climate were not significant predictors; however, task-goal orientation and task-involving motivational climate were positive predictors of both categories of sources. Results implicate that nurturing adaptive perfectionistic characteristics, task-goal orientation, and task-involving motivational climate would be critical to athletes' selection of controllable sources of confidence.

Keywords:

• confidence
• sources of confidence
• perfectionism
• achievement goal orientation
• motivational climate

Acknowledgements

Authors have a related study1 using the data collected at the same time of the present study. However, there is no overlap of the variables examined between these two studies. The present study was a part of the first author's master's thesis at Miami University, and was funded by the Master's Thesis Support Grant from Miami University. The authors would like to thank research participants, faculty, and graduate and undergraduate students at Miami University, who provided assistance for this project.

Notes

The present study was a part of a larger study that included other variables, levels of sport-confidence measured by Sport-Confidence Inventory (SCI: Vealey & Knight, 2002). The data on the level of confidence are integrated into the analysis of factor structure of SCI by authors (in preparation). These two studies do not have any overlap of the variables examined.

The study originally included Coaches' Interpersonal Behaviors (Pelletier, Sharp, Beaudry, & Otis, in press) as a second social predictor. However, we made a decision not to include this factor based on the poor fit of the measurement model that was conducted in the preliminary analysis. Factor structure of this measurement was not confirmed. The results from the preliminary analyses can be obtained from the first author.

The primary author's university institutional review board was at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at the time of the study.