Differences in Motivation for Participating Sport Activities According to Sport Branches

The purpose of this study was to examine the participation motives of youth from different sport branches and examine the differences with respect to different demographic variables. The study was conducted on 85 girls and 202 boys from different sport branches in Turkey. The average age of the participants were 14.29 years (SD=1.1). The “Participation Motivation Questionnaire (PMQ)” (Gill, Gross and Huddleston (1983) was administered on the participants. The reliability and validity of the PMQ was tested by Oyar, Aşçı, Çelebi and Mülazımoğlu (2001). The scale consisted of 30 items and 8 subscales. All items were measured and sorted using a three-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics and were performed on all variables including means and standard deviations. Independent Samples ttest was also used to determine differences between the scores acquired from the scale and some independent variables. Analysis indicated significant differences in achievement/status (t= 2.71; p < 0.05), team affiliation (t= 2.12; p < 0.05) and friendship (t= 3.81; p < 0.01) subscales between girls and boys. Boys had higher scores than the girls. There were significant differences in achievement/status (t= 2.52; p < 0.01), team affiliation (t= 2.33; p < 0.01), energy release/fitness (t= 2.33; p < 0.05) and competition (t= 2.50; p < 0.01) subscales with regard to sport experience. Less experienced participants had lower scores than the more experienced. As a result, it can be concluded that based on the mean ratings of each of the 30 participation motives, “improve my skills” and “to raise my sport branch” were the most important participation motives for the participants.