Attribution of Causality in Sport Events: Validation of the Wingate Sport Achivememt Responsibility Scale

Abstract

Attribution of causality, based on Rotter's (1966) and Weiner's (1979) models, was investigated in a sport setting. The Wingate Sport Achievement Responsibility Scale (WSARS) was developed in order to examine attribution of causality separately for individual and team athletes after successful and unsuccessful events. The scale included feedback from the coach, audience, and teammates. Additional attributions were added in order to examine sport related properties of attributions. In order to examine the distinction between sport-specific attributions and general locus of control (LOG), 69 team athletes and 38 individual athletes were administered the Rotter I-E LOG Scale and the WSARS (Tenenbaum & Weingarten, 1983). Both Rotter's Scale and the WSARS were found to be reliable and valid scales through the probabilistic Rasch Model. Correlational analysis of both scales showed that attribution of causality in team and individual sports were positively related but produced low correlations, which suggests that sport attribution should be examined separately from general LOG. In addition, successful events should be examined separately from unsuccessful events and a distinction should be made between individual and team athletes.