WHAT IS ENJOYMENT - A CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONAL ANALYSIS WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY/

It has been suggested that enjoyment is a key construct for understand ing and explaining the motivation and experiences of sport and exercis e participants (Scanlan & Simons, 1992; Wankel, 1993). In this paper, definitions of enjoyment used by sport and exercise psychology researc hers are reviewed, and the conceptual and measurement implications for the study of sport and exercise experiences are discussed. In many st udies investigating enjoyment, researchers have not adequately defined the construct. Also, there are possible limitations with proposed def initions of enjoyment (e.g., Scanlan & Simons, 1992; Wankel, 1993). On e possible way of addressing these limitations is to conceptualize and define enjoyment as flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993). To support this en joyment-equals-flow contention, enjoyment/flow is compared with other related constructs: affect, attitude, pleasure, and intrinsic motivati on. Implications of the suggested definition of enjoyment as flow for past and present enjoyment research in sport and exercise psychology a re discussed.