Investigation of the Relationship between Academic and Sport Motivation Orientations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between academic and sport motivation orientations of the Physical Education and Sport (PES) college students and also to explore gender effects in this relationship. The sample group of the study was composed of 154 students (68 female, 86 male) attending to Bart n University Physical Education and Sport College. All the students were applied both Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) and Sport Motivation Scale (SMS) in order to find out academic and athletic motivational orientations. The data derived from these two scales were evaluated in Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) 19.0 software through descriptive statistics ( , SD), independent samples t-test (p<0.05) and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (p<0.01). Cronbach’s alpha was calculated as 0.82 and 0.76 respectively for AMS and SMS. Therefore Cronbach’s alpha indicator of both scales suggested that the items have relatively high internal consistency. The independent t-tests proved that there are significant differences between genders in intrinsic motivation to know, extrinsic motivation external regulation and amotivation sub-scales of AMS; and in extrinsic motivation external regulation and amotivation sub-scales of SMS. This study also proved that there are strong correlations between academic and sport motivation orientations of PES college students according to gender and suggested to adopt Sports and Academics Questionnaire (SAMSAQ) in order to better understand this relationship.