A Test of Multiple Achievement Goal Benefits in Physical Education Activities

The independent and combined effects of achievement goals for physical education activities were investigated. Both dispositional goal orientations as well as perceived motivational goal climate were assessed, and the paper evaluated four different hypotheses for multiple goal benefits (additive, interactive, specialized, and selective hypotheses). It was hypothesized that students may benefit most from endorsing both task and ego orientations in their fitness activities, especially depending on their perceptions of the motivational climate. However, benefits of pursuing multiple goal orientations were not found. Instead, students reported putting forth more effort, enjoying their fitness activities more, feeling more competent in the activity, and persisting after the semester when they endorsed a task orientation or perceived the motivational climate to be task oriented.

Acknowledgments

Jennifer A. Thomas and Kenneth E. Barron, Department of Psychology, James Madison University. This research was completed as a senior thesis and supported by Kenneth E. Barron.

Additional gratitude is extended to Dr. McMillin, Dr. Vedelli, and Dr. Gill who assisted in the review process, and Caleb Hannan for helping with data collection and entry.

Notes

¹ Achievement goal theorists have used a variety of other labels to distinguish between these two main types of goals. For example, a task goal has been called a mastery goal (Ames & Archer, 1988), learning goal (Dweck & Leggett, 1988), and intrinsic goal (Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). An ego goal has been called a performance goal (Ames & Archer, 1988) or extrinsic goal (Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). However, task and ego goals will be used as labels throughout this paper.

* p < .01; Gender is coded as females (+1) and males (−1).