Perceived Role Characteristics and Executive Satisfaction in Voluntary Sport Associations

This study tested the relationship between perceived role characteristics and role satisfaction among sport executives. It also investigated the relative importance of role characteristics and individual variables in the prediction of role satisfaction. Measures of perceived role characteristics and role satisfaction were obtained through content analysis of interviews with 60 executives involved in Quebec amateur sport federations. Demographic data were gathered by questionnaire. Results indicated positive correlations between perceived role characteristics and role satisfaction. As demonstrated by multiple regression analysis, the selected individual characteristics (age and marital status) were not predictive of role satisfaction. Use of competence, autonomy, role significance, and recognition were found to be the four major determinants of role satisfaction within the voluntary sport associations.

Exercise by Mail: A Mediated Behavior-Change Program for Aerobic Exercise

Regular, vigorous physical activity (aerobic exercise) appears to have significant benefits in preventing disease, but exercise levels continue to be low in spite of the wide availability of intensive fitness programs. Self-instructional behavior-change packages can reach more people than face-to-face methods, and can address a range of problem behaviors. This study investigated the effectiveness of a self-instructional training program for aerobic exercise. Participants were allocated randomly to an exercise correspondence course involving several mailings of information (n=53), or to exactly the same program mailed in a single package (n=52). People who initially showed interest in the course but withdrew before it began (n=33), and participants in standard fitness classes (n=31), were used as comparison groups. All courses were 12-week aerobic programs of gradually increasing intensity. At the end of the program, participants in the single-package course were significantly more active than those in the multiple-mailing program, and were similar to those in the fitness class. At a 10-month follow-up, there were no significant differences among the reported physical activity levels of participants in the four different conditions. Despite the somewhat weak effects obtained in this investigation, programs that can be administered by mail can reach large numbers of people who may wish to change health-related behaviors.

Efficacy Expectations and Perceptions of Causality in Motor Performance

Bandura (1977) has proposed self-efficacy as a common cognitive mechanism accounting for the effects of various psychological processes on performance. Although recent studies have provided preliminary evidence for the relationship between self-efficacy and subsequent performance on competitive motor tasks, little has been done to examine the relationship between self-efficacy and the cognitive appraisal of competitive sport information. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between personal self-efficacy and the causal explanations given for performance in a competitive sport setting. Subjects were manipulated into high and low efficacy groups, engaged in a competitive motor task against an opponent, and then gave causal attributions for outcome. Multivariate analyses did not reveal any significant differences between high and low efficacy groups' causal explanations for outcome. However, winners made more stable and controllable attributions than did losers. The results are discussed in terms of the possible perception of lack of responsibility for outcomes that do not occur in natural environments, consequently eliminating the need for causal ascriptions.

Expert-Novice Differences in an Applied Selective Attention Task

Two experiments are described comparing the temporal and spatial characteristics of the anticipatory cues used by expert (n=20) and novice (n=35) racquet sport players. In both experiments the perceptual display available in badminton was simulated using film, and display characteristics were selectively manipulated either by varying the duration of the stroke sequence that was visible (Experiment 1) or by selectively masking specific display features (Experiment 2). The subjects* task in all cases was to predict the landing position of the stroke they were viewing. It was found in Experiment 1 that experts were able to pick up more relevant information from earlier display cues than could novices, and this appeared in Experiment 2 to be due to their ability to extract advance information from the playing side arm, in addition to the racquet itself. These differences, it was concluded, were congruent with predictions that could be derived from traditional information-processing notions related to recognition of display redundancy. The roles of different anticipatory cue sources in the independent predictions of stroke speed and direction were also examined, and it was concluded that directional judgments were more dependent on cue specificity than were depth judgments.

The Relationship between Performance, Intention to Drop Out, and Intrapersonal Conflict in Swimmers

Athletes* success and failure have often been linked to certain personality characteristics. Although previous results in this area were equivocal, many researchers concluded that athletes often drop out of competitive sport because of conflicts of interest, or because they fail to demonstrate high ability in sports. This investigation assessed the importance of intrapersonal conflicts to athletic performance and to dropping out. Swimmers competing at three different levels of performance filled out a conflict questionnaire. Some had indicated that they planned to discontinue their swimming career soon. High performers showed less conflict and a more intensive use of cognitive conflict reduction mechanisms than did medium performers and low level swimmers. Dropouts, on the other hand, had higher conflict scores in areas directly related to athletic performance than did continuers. Intrapersonal conflict was interpreted to be an important mediating variable in sport and personality research.

Assessing the Cohesion of Teams: Validity of the Group Environment Questionnaire

The process of validating a recently developed instrument to assess perceived team cohesion is discussed. The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ), an instrument designed to measure cohesion in sport teams, has good estimates for its internal consistency and for its content and factorial validity (Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985; Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1985). However, other aspects of its validity required examination. The present article reports three studies concerning inspection of the GEQ's concurrent (Study 1), predictive (Study 2), and construct (Study 3) validities. In Study 1 the GEQ exhibited the predicted correspondence with similar measures of cohesion and was not significantly correlated with measures of other constructs. In Study 2 the GEQ successfully discriminated team and individual sport athletes by predicting their membership to these groups on the basis of their task cohesion scores. As well, classification of athletes as new and long-standing members of individual sport teams was predicted on the basis of their social cohesion scores. Finally, in Study 3 evidence was obtained for the predicted difference in self-responsibility attributions between high and low task-cohesive athletes of team sports. Considering the results of the three studies with previous evidence of content and factorial validity, the conclusion was that the GEQ is valid. In sum, demonstrations of the GEQ's content, factorial, concurrent, predictive, and construct validity reflect the ongoing process of its construct validation.

Generality and Specificity of Attention Belated to Competitive Anxiety and Sport Performance

The Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS) was developed as an objective measure by which an individual's attentional predisposition could be identified and used to predict performance on a variety of tasks. The present study had three purposes: (a) to construct a baseball/softball batting (B-TAIS) version of each TAIS attentional subscale, (b) to compare TAIS and B-TAIS reliability, and (c) to compare TAIS and B-TAIS validity. Both instruments were administered to 29 intercollegiate baseball and softball players. The B-TAIS demonstrated slightly higher test-restest reliability on five of the six attentional subscales and was higher than the TAIS in internal consistency on all subscales. Batting performance was positively related to all B-TAIS subscales assessing effective attentional deployment and negatively related to all subscales assessing ineffective attention. Significant positive correlations also existed between B-TAIS ineffective subscale scores and competitive trait anxiety. However, these relationships were not found with the general TAIS.