Goal-Setting Interventions in Sports: Public Goal Monitoring Improves Swimmers' Motivation and Performance

Interventions based on the goal-setting theory include a goal-setting situation and different feedback variations. Very few studies have compared the impact of different goal-setting interventions on young athletes' performance. This preliminary work aimed to examine the effectiveness of two interventions, goal-setting with private monitoring and goal-setting with public posting. In the study, young swimmers (N = 42) with a mean age of 10 (M = 9.88; SD = 1.88) were assigned to a public monitoring condition, a private monitoring condition, and a control condition. A difference was found in the attendance of training sessions, with the public posting group being superior to other groups. Controlling for baseline performance, participants in the public posting condition performed better than control participants. Public posting created conditions in which it was easier to accept set goals as focal and put greater effort into their attainment. The results contribute to a better understanding of how goal monitoring motivates behavior and performance.