Head Over Heels with Success: The Relationship between Self-Efficacy and Performance in Competitive Youth Gymnastics

Abstract

Research on children involved in youth sport competition has been a popular area in sport psychology. Since the publication of Gould's (1982) paper on the status and future directions of youth sport research, several investigations have emerged, including competitive anxiety patterns of young wrestlers (Gould, Horn, & Spreeman, 1983a, 1983b) reasons for participation and attrition in swimming (Gould, Feltz, Mom, & Weiss, 1982; Gould, Feltz, & Weiss, 1985), and participation motives of gymnasts (Klint & Weiss, 1986, 1987). One topic that has not received much attention in youth sport research is self-efficacy. The construct of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977, 1986) has been a predominant psychological factor in motor and sport performance (see Feltz, 1988). Self-efficacy is defined as the extent to which an individual believes he or she can execute the behaviors (e.g., sport performance) needed to produce a certain outcome (e.g., succeed in sport). Despite the important and consistent finding that self-efficacy is a strong predictor of performance, most of this research has been conducted with adults. Thus the present study was designed to replicate and extend studies by Gould et al. (1983a) and Scanlan, Lewthwaite, and Jackson (1984) by examining the role of self-efficacy as well as other psychological factors in youth gymnastics. Gould et al. (1983a) studied the competitive anxiety patterns of 13to 19-year-old boys participating in a national wrestling tournament. As part of this extensive study, wrestlers who placed first through sixth in the tournament (placers) were compared to those finishing below sixth (nonplacers) on perceived wrestling ability, performance predictions, and confidence in their performance predic-