A social learning approach to youth sport motivation: Initial scale development and validation

Rotter's social learning theory specifies that behaviors derive from the values that people have for potential outcomes and people's expectations for control over desired outcomes. The theory requires measurement of values and expectancies associated with a behavior. No such instrument exists for sport. Work on evaluation of services for children suggests the need to measure children and parents jointly. No instrument designed for use in sport provides complementary scales for parents and children. This dissertation develops scales measuring parents' and children's values and expectancies for youth sport participation.;In Study 1, previous sport motivation research was content analyzed to generate an initial item pool. Analysis identified 420 items which were then refined using two panels of lay experts, one panel of sport researchers, and 16 cognitive interviews, yielding a pool of 103 value items and 103 expectancy items.;In Study 2, 154 swimmers and 156 parents responded to the scales; then in Study 3, 101 soccer players and 108 parents responded to revisions and simplifications of the scales that derived from Study 2. These studies evaluated items in terms of distribution, relationship to the total scale, dimensionality, stability, redundancy, conceptual relationship to their subscale, and item-cross total correlations. Internal consistencies of the scales and subscales were also examined. For parents, these studies yielded a 15-item value scale representing four dimensions, and a 15-item expectancy scale representing three dimensions. For children, analyses yielded a 19-item value scale representing five dimensions, and an 11-item expectancy scale representing two dimensions.;In Study 4, 191 pairs of parents and children in soccer responded to the refined scales. To ascertain scale validity, parents completed measures of organizational commitment, attitude, sport involvement, and locus of control. Children completed measures of participation motivation, sport commitment, locus of control, and attitude. Internal consistencies were within acceptable ranges. Subscales evidenced expected patterns of convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity. Sport-specific measures of expectancy provided better discrimination and prediction than did general measures of locus of control. Inclusion of expectancy scales improved prediction of sport commitment beyond that generated from values alone.