Goal Orientation and Imagery Use for Collegiate Elite Basketball Athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this study had two major reasons. Firstly, it was to examine different motivational profiles of collegiate elite basketball athletes on the functions and amounts of imagery used. Secondly, it was to compare the different competition levels and gender of basketball athletes on goal orientation and imagery used. There were 283 elite basketball athletes (male 151, female 132) drawn from colleges completed the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) and the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ) to assess goal orientation dispositional, frequency and function of imagery use. A two-stage cluster analysis on the TEOSQ scores revealed a three-cluster solution. One-way MANOVA (independent) was used to analyze the differences on imagery use among cluster groups and to analyze differences on goal orientation and imagery use at different competition levels and gender. The results showed both Cluster1 (moderate task/high ego) and Cluster3 (high task/low ego) used significantly more five types of imagery use than Cluster2 (low task/low ego) did. The first level of competition did better on both specific cognitive and specific motivation of imagery use than the second level of competition did. And male athletes had significantly more scores on five type of imagery use than female athletes did. According these findings concluded the role of achievement motivation in influencing collegiate elite basketball athletes’ behavioral investments in imagery use, and the imagery use was influenced by different competition level and gender of basketball athletes.