An Investigation of Task and Ego Oriented Goals of the Students Majoring at the Faculty of Sport Sciences

Emre Belli

doi:10.13189/ujer.2015.031202

Abstract

aim of this study is to explore the task and ego oriented goals of the students majoring at the Faculty of Sports Sciences at Ataturk University. For data collection, The Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire, which was developed by Duda (1) and adapted into Turkish by Toros and Yetim (2), was used in the current study to examine the task and ego oriented goals of students. This questionnaire was administered to a total of 375 students consisting of 224 male and 151 female students. For data analysis, SPSS statistical packet program was used for frequency analysis, and independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA and Tukey test were run to find out the source of the difference among different groups of participants. results of the study showed that there was no statistically significant difference in terms of the comparison of the task and ego-oriented goals regarding the participants' gender (p=,332) whereas there was a significant difference between male and female students in terms of specifically ego-orientation especially in favor of female students (p=,003). Based on this result, female students were found to favor ego orientation to reach their goals much more than male students. Apart from that, the comparison of the participants' fields of study indicated that in terms of task-oriented goals, there was a statistically significant difference in favor of team sports (p=,025) and significant differences were revealed among participants from different fields of study in terms of ego-oriented goals especially in favor of individual sports (p=,000). A number of implications for further research and education were suggested based on the results obtained from the analysis of the task and ego-oriented goals of male and female students majoring in different fields of study and departments.

Highlights

In recent years, athletes’ behavioral patterns that they perform to reach their goals have become one of the most significant fields of study in sport psychology
Task and ego orientation of students who study at Faculty of Sport Science in Atatürk University has been searched while achieving their goals and the following results were obtained from the analysis of data
If it is considered that individuals’ age group that we focused, is a period that shows the transition from adolescent to adulthood, another reason could be related to the individuals management strategies to cope with general and individual targets they have regardless of being either in team sport or individual sport in trainings

Summary

Introduction

Athletes’ behavioral patterns that they perform to reach their goals have become one of the most significant fields of study in sport psychology. Goal orientation has been considered as one of these factors. Goal orientation means that people are related to various goals or activities to gain sense of achievement resulting from reaching their goals. To obtain this sense of achievement, people are directed to various types of goals (Toros, 3). Keeping this definition in mind, the current study aims to contribute to the relevant literature with an attempt to reveal the target way that the individuals who are expected to serve Turkish sports pursue and their goal orientations

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion