Goal motives and multiple-goal striving in sport and academia: a person-centered investigation of goal motives and inter-goal relations

Objectives:

This investigation extended the goal striving literature by examining motives for two goals being pursued simultaneously. Grounded in self-determination theory, we examined how student-athletes’ motives for their sporting and academic goals were associated with inter-goal facilitation and interference.

Design:

Cross-sectional survey.

Methods:

UK university student-athletes (n = 204) identified their most important sporting and academic goals. They then rated their extrinsic, introjected, identified and intrinsic motives for these goals and completed questionnaires assessing inter-goal facilitation and interference.

Results:

Using a person-centered approach via latent profile analysis, we identified three distinct profiles of goal motives. Auxiliary analyses showed that the profile with high identified motives for both goals reported greater inter-goal facilitation.

Conclusions:

Extending the previous literature, the findings demonstrate the benefits of autonomous motives when simultaneously pursing goals in sport and academia.