Term of Award

1998

Degree Name

Master of Science in Kinesiology

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Department

Department of Health and Kinesiology

Committee Chair

Kevin L. Burke

Committee Member 1

A. Barry Joyner

Committee Member 2

Charles J. Hardy

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory investigation was to examine the relationship between optimism and pessimism and sport orientation (competitiveness, win orientation, and goal orientation) in intercollegiate athletes from a southeastern university. More generally, this study compared whether optimistic and pessimistic college athletes differ in sport orientation. A secondary purpose was to determine whether optimism, pessimism, and sport orientation differ between gender, race, age, athletic grade classification, type of sport, and scholarship type. University athletes (N=259) from 15 different teams (women's = softball & volleyball; men's = baseball, football, golf; men's & women's = soccer, swimming, tennis, cross country, basketball) were administered the Life Orientation Test-Revised (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994) and the Sport Orientation Questionnaire (Gill & Deeter, 1988). Due to recent discussions in the optimism and pessimism (O/P) literature, O/P scores were calculated using two separate scoring techniques. One scoring technique allows an individual to be classified on both characteristics, while the other treats the trait as a bipolar dimension. Separate independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVAs were used to determine if differences existed between groups. The alpha level was set at p

OCLC Number

1029202129

Copyright

To obtain a full copy of this work, please visit the campus of Georgia Southern University or request a copy via your institution's Interlibrary Loan (ILL) department. Authors and copyright holders, learn how you can make your work openly accessible online.

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