Sport commitment differences among shooting athletes on the basis of skill level

Abstract

Sport commitment is psychological state representing the desire or resolve to continue participation in specific sport or sport in general and represents an athlete's psychological states of attachment to their participation. Through the committed motivation for sports participation, individuals form their activity choices, how much effort they put forth in sport activity-related endeavors, and how long they persist, particularly in the face of obstacles and failure. Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate potential differences in the levels of the supported Sport commitment model (Scanlan et al.,1993, 2016) variables on the shooting athletes basis on the skill level. Direct comparison of the commitment factors between three skill level of shooting athletes will allow coaches, practitioners, and managers to understand the athletes commitment characteristics for their sport, thereby will help to increase the retention and skill level further. For the target shooting sport which requires a great amount of devotion and commitment from individuals, it is crucial to understand each level athletes commitments characteristics in order to optimize for structuring the sports program to motivate not only the grassroots level, but also inspire elite level performance. For that reason, the current study examined the sport commitment differences of shooting athletes with a different level of skill. Design: Drawing on the literature reviewed as an underpinning framework, the survey questionnaire was designed which was administrated to competitors attending National Shooting Sport Championships 2018. Based on the Sport commitment model (Scanlan et al.,1993; 2016), the assessment tool (SCQ-2 questionnaire by Scanlan, Chow, Sousa, Scanlan, & Knifsend, (2016)), 12 sources commitment supported by 58 items, extracted and validated from the research of Scanlan et al., (2016), is employed to measure the shooting athletes commitment. Methods: The Cronbachs alpha for the scale of 0.819 suggests that there is an internal consistency within the scale. A one-way between subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare respondents on sport commitment and its determinants self-reported beginner, intermediate, and advanced skill ratings as defined by the Mongolian Shooting Sport Federations mastery category (MSSF, 2017). In the study, the surveys were distributed to 203 athletes who were participated in Mongolian National Shooting Sport Championships 2018. A total of 142 surveys were returned, of which 114 were deemed usable (response rate = 56.1%). Results: A one-way ANOVA analysis revealed significant differences among 7 (out of 12) sport commitment variables between skill levels. Significant differences existed across the groups by the variables of Other priorities [F(2,111)=3.775, p=0.026], Personal Investment Quantity [F(2,111)=8.767, p=0.000], Personal investment loss [F(2,111)=4.249, p=0.017], Social support informational [F(2,111)=4.465, p=0.014], Desire to excel mastery [F(2,111)=6.490, p=0.002], Desire to excel social [F(2,110)=7.653, p=0.001], Enthusiastic commitment [F(2,110)=10.450, p=0.000]. Moreover, result shows that beginner shooting athletes reported a significantly higher level of personal investment loss, social support informational, and enthusiastic commitment than other two groups. Intermediate athletes in the study were scored particularly higher for other priorities and desire to excel mastery. Advanced athlete group was higher scored in personal investment quantity and desire to excel social variables.