Relationship between female adolescents' achievement goal orientations, perceptions of the motivational climate, belief about success and sources of satisfaction in basketball

Achievement goal theory states that dispositional goal orientations and perceptions of the climate are two dimensions of motivation that interact to affect behavior in achievement settings. Research to date, however, has primarily dealt with these two variables in isolation. The present study initially examined the concomitants of mastery and performance oriented perceptions of the climate, and then assessed the contribution of both type of variable in predicting 274 female adolescent athletes beliefs aborts the causes of success and sources of satisfaction following a week long residential basketball camp. Participants perceiving a mastery oriented climate had a stronger belief that success follows from one's own efforts and derived satisfaction from mastery experiences. Participants perceiving a performance oriented climate derived satisfaction from outperforming others, and attributed success to ability and deception, Moderated hierarchical regression analyzes revealed separate main effects as well as significant interaction effects between goal orientations and perceptions of the motivational climate in predicting the participants' responses. Although the results of the present study, adds further support to the argument that mastery oriented contexts should be stressed the findings also suggest that goal orientations, and the interaction of these two dimensions of motivation must be taken into account when examining the youth sport experience.