Achievement Goals, Motivational Climate and Sportspersonship: A Study of Young Handball Players

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between achievement goals, perceptions of motivational climate and sportspersonship in a sample of young male Norwegian handball players. A cross-sectional study of 440 male handball players aged from 14 to 16 was conducted, in which the players responded to a questionnaire measuring different dimensions of sportspersonship, achievement goals and the motivational climate. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that players who were task-oriented and those that perceived the motivational climate as predominantly mastery-oriented, reported higher levels of sportspersonship. In contrast, ego-oriented players and players perceiving the motivational climate as predominantly performance-oriented were more apt to report unsporting behaviour and less respect for social conventions, opponents, rules and officials. Moreover, interaction effects revealed that strongly ego-oriented players showed significantly less respect for their opponents when operating in a weak rather than a strong mastery climate.