Attitudes toward physical activity and achievement-related characteristics in a select sample of New Zealand netball players

Abstract

A written questionnaire was distributed to three groups of netball players differentiated according to the type of competition they played in. The Representative netball group contained netballers who had been selected to represent their netball association in local and national competitions. The Saturday players belonged to a club and played for that club in a regular Saturday competition. Women who participated in a less formally organised netball competition held during normal working hours on a weekday formed the Midweek sample. The research which follows investigates motivation to play netball. It describes the main social and demographic characteristics of the netball players, their history of involvement with the sport, and their patterns of play and training. The research focuses on differences between the three netball groups in what attracts them to play netball and in their achievement-related characteristics. In an attempt to measure attitudes toward physical activity players were asked to indicate what attracted them, to play netball, thus measuring the perceived instrumental value of netball. It was possible to ascertain from this to what extent players from the three groups were motivated to play netball for achievement-related reasons. Reference is made to the Kenyon conceptual model of physical activity and to McClelland's work on achievement motivation and Weiner's attribution theory. Data are analysed using a variety of statistical tests including Chi-square tests for nominal data with Goodman's Simultaneous Confidence Interval procedure and one-way Analysis of Variance followed by Dunn's tests for data scaled at the interval level or above. The results lend full support to the hypothesis that the three netball-playing groups can be distinguished on the basis of demographic description, history of involvement with the sport and patterns of training and participation. In addition, groups differed on what attracted them to play netball with Representatives being more attracted to netball for competition, because they liked to win, and as an opportunity to learn and practise skills. In contrast. Midweek netball players were more attracted to netball to "get away from the problems of modern living" and "to release pent-up emotion" than netballers from the other two groups. The attributional patterns of Representative netball players in the sample closely resembled those found for highly achievement-motivated individuals, making greater use of attributions to internal causal factors particularly ability. Midweek netball players tended to exhibit the pattern of externality making stronger attributions to external factors for poor game performances. In particular Midweek players made greater attributions to luck than the Representative netballers. The thesis points to several implications for netball players, coaches and administrators and concludes that more research is necessary on women in sport.