A qualitative synthesis of research into social motivational influences across the athletic career span

Abstract

This study represents a qualitative synthesis of research examining the socio-environmental influences of coaches, parents and peers on athlete motivation, across the athletic career-span. Using a critical-realist perspective, meta-interpretation methodology was deployed to search and analyse the literature. On-going, iterative analysis generated new areas of enquiry and new search terms, until the emerging analysis reached the points of saturation. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed during this process to produce a clear statement of applicability for the study. In the final analysis, a developmental structure was specified to describe the athletic career trajectory, together with a horizontal structure capturing seven domains of the motivational atmosphere surrounding athletes (competition, training, evaluation, emotion, authority, social-support, and relatedness), and a vertical structure varying in terms of level-of-abstraction: The global/ broad 'motivational atmosphere' containing contextual 'climates', built from immediate/situational 'motivational conditions'. A model of the overall 'motivational atmosphere' in sport, based on a meteorological analogy, is offered with a view to stimulating critical debate and new research directions that reflect the complexity of interpersonal motivation in sport.Keywords: motivation; climate; coaching; parent influences; peer influences Motivation is an important and recurring theme in sport psychology: any behaviour exhibited (or not) is a result of motivational processes (Deci and Ryan 1985). Motivation is often confused with ideas concerning energisation or arousal, but it is better understood as a function of the goals, or reasons, behind the motivated activity (Roberts 2001). Hence, when studying the social influences on the motivation of athletes, one is examining the reasons behind the motivated actions and the ways in which coaches, parents and peers, for example, can influence these reasons. These three social agents, taken together, are perhaps the most consistent and reliable sources of influence across the athlete's sporting experience. A number of qualitative studies have recently examined these influences (e.g. Vazou et al.

A qualitative investigation of the factors perceived to influence student motivation for school-based extracurricular sports participation in Japan

“…With respect to 'encouragement and support' and 'attributes of peers,' the viewpoints of coaches, parents, and peers were consistent with previous studies that broadly targeted adolescent and elite sports areas rather than SBECSA (Keegan et al, 2010b(Keegan et al, , 2014b. The present study further clarifies the roles of teachers.…”

“…For Keegan, Harwood, Spray, and Lavallee (2009), 2010b, (2014a) explored the influences of coaches, parents, and peers on athletes' motivation at the sampling, specializing, and elite career stages, respectively. Keegan, Spray, Harwood, and Lavallee (2014b) synthesized the qualitative research in this area to illustrate differences between career stages. However, the majority of these qualitative studies focus on organized sports, often outside the school setting.…”

Auditing the socio-environmental determinants of motivation towards physical activity or sedentariness in work-aged adults: a qualitative study

“…The motivational influence exerted by key social agents is referred to as the motivational climate [ 28 ], or motivational atmosphere [ 29 ]. Recent research has emphasized the benefits of concurrently examining influences from multiple socio-environmental agents, leading to a richer understanding of how these factors interact and combine to influence motivation [ 30 , 31 ]. Additionally, these papers have illustrated the importance of resisting using a familiar and simplistic theoretical perspective a priori when viewing complex social phenomena [ 31 – 34 ].…”

“…Recent research has emphasized the benefits of concurrently examining influences from multiple socio-environmental agents, leading to a richer understanding of how these factors interact and combine to influence motivation [ 30 , 31 ]. Additionally, these papers have illustrated the importance of resisting using a familiar and simplistic theoretical perspective a priori when viewing complex social phenomena [ 31 – 34 ]. By adopting such a theoretically agnostic approach [ 35 ] it is then possible to reflect back on compatibility with existing theories a posteriori , rather than allowing theory to determine what is examined, how, and how data is interpreted [ 35 , 36 ].…”

Doing descriptive phenomenological data collection in sport psychology research

“…anxiety, self-esteem, identity, self-efficacy). It can be argued that using questionnaires to measure such multifaceted constructs risks the subjective experience of each individual being reduced to the confines of a Likert Scale and even further condensed by statistical tests during data analysis (Keegan et al, 2014;Martens, 1979Martens, , 1987b. Although questionnaires and statistics certainly have their merits, it can be argued that the participants' individuality is compromised when they are made to fit into a predetermined category in order to be seen as significant (Martens, 1979;Keegan et al, 2014).…”