SELF-DETERMINED MOTIVATION AND SPORTSMANSHIP ORIENTATIONS - AN ASSESSMENT OF THEIR TEMPORAL RELATIONSHIP

The motives underlying involvement in sport appear to influence how a person will play the game. However, how athletes play the game may als o have an impact on their motives for participating in sports. The pur pose of this study was to examine the relationship between self-determ ined motivation and sportsmanship orientations by using a longitudinal design, as well as recent theoretical approaches to sportsmanship (Va llerand, 1991, 1994) and motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1991). Male ad olescent elite hockey players (N = 77, mean age = 15.8) completed a qu estionnaire assessing both constructs 2 weeks into the hockey season ( T1) and at the end of the regular season (T2), 5 months later. The res ults from cross-lag correlations suggested that, over time, self-deter mined motivation and sportsmanship orientations have a positive bidire ctional relation, in which self-determined motivation has greater infl uence on sportsmanship. These results give further impetus to the need to consider motivation in future studies on sportsmanship.