EFFECTS OF GOAL-SETTING INTERVENTIONS ON SELECTED BASKETBALL SKILLS -A SINGLE-SUBJECT DESIGN

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of a goal -setting intervention program on selected components of basketball per formance over the course of a competitive season. A multiple-baseline, single-subject design was used with baseline observations on various performance components (e.g., turnovers, rebounds), collected for four elite college basketball players during their first eight games of th e season. At the midseason break, these players selected one aspect of their play that they felt would benefit from improvement. A goal-sett ing program was designed based on the goal attainment scaling procedur e recommended by Smith (1988), whereby subjects generated numerical ta rgets for their chosen components. Performance components were then as sessed for the next eight games as they had been in the preinterventio n phase. Following the intervention, 3 of the 4 subjects showed consis tent improvements in their targeted area of performance. Also, there w ere no outcome changes in the performance components that weren't targ eted by the subjects. The findings suggest that future studies may ben efit from achieving greater ecological validity and utilizing alternat ive designs to the traditional nomothetic approaches which may tend to mask positive intervention effects on certain individuals.