The Relationship of Gender, Level of Sport Involvement, and Participation Motivation to Task and Ego Orientation

The Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) was developed to assess dispositional differences in goal perspective in sport contexts. The purpose of this study was to provide further support for the TEOSQ's reliability and validity by: 1) assessing the internal reliability of the two TEOSQ subscales across groups which varied in age and competitive involvement, 2) determining whether TEOSQ scores varied as a function of gender and level of sport involvement, and 3) examining the relationship between goal orientation and reasons for participating in sport. 232 male and female youth (YS), high school (HS), intercollegiate (IS), and recreational (RS) sport participants responded to the TEOSQ with the latter three groups also completing the Participation Motivation Questionnaire. The task (coeff. alpha = .77-.87) and ego (coeff. alpha = .77-.91) orientation subscales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency across groups. The highest competitive level group (i.e., IS athletes) was significantly more ego-oriented than YS, HS, or RS athletes. Males were higher in ego orientation than females and a Gender hy Competitive Level interaction emerged in terms of task orientation scores. Conceptually consistent relationships emerged between dispositional goal perspective and motives for athletic involvement.