A Study On The Effect Mechanism Of Achievement Goal Orientation, Autonomy Support On Athlete’s Motivation

Grounded in the achievement goal orientation theory and self-determination theory, combining the methods of qualitative and quantitative, the aim of the present study was to examine the mechanism of how to stimulate athletes’motivation and promote external motivation integration and internalization. Starting from the literature review, master the historical development and advances of achievement goal orientation theory and self-determination theory in sport psychology. Secondly, through interview on the national freestyle skiing aerials team’s athletes, initially prove the applicability of approach-avoidance goal orientation, basic needs theory, organic integration theory in Chinese athletes. Third, there was a quantify research to test a theoretically-based model of coach autonomy support,2X2 achievement goal orientation, motivational processes and outcome among a sample of college athletes participants. Some standard research methods, such as exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis and path analysis are employed. The conclusion drawn by these researches are as follows:First, Chinese athletes have three basic psychology needs of competence, relatedness and autonomy. They also have the types of regulation from organismic integration theory and the quality of extrinsic motivation regulating behaviour varies from highly controlled to more self-determined process. Athletes have approach-avoidance goal orientation under different situations of training and competition.Second, achievement goal orientation in sport questionnaire were construced. Analyses supported the internal consistency, factorial validity, and nomological validity evidence was also supported, as subscale scores were correlated with self-handcapping. Mastery-approach goal positively associated with self-handcapping, performance-approach and two avoidance goals negatively associated with self-handcapping.Third, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that competence and relatedness partially mediated the path from autonomy support to motivational processes. Motivational processes mediated the path from competence and relatedness to behavioral, cognitive, and affective. Self-determination motivation positive predicted adaptive outcome, negative predicted unadaptive outcome.Last, four achievement goals mediated the path from improvement, learning, gift, stable of implicit theory to basic need satisfaction. Competence and relatedness partially mediated the path from achievement goal to intrinsic motivation. Mastery-approach goal and performance-approach goal positive predicted intrinsic motivation, performance-avoidance goal negative predicted intrinsic motivation.According to the result of this study, put forward some advices to stimulate athletes motives:providing autonomy support; creating the appropriate motivate climate according to the different requisition of training and competition; cultivating incremental theory about sport ability; satisfying needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness.