Daniery Rosario *, John H. Kerr ** and Alison Rhodius *
(*) Sport Psychology Program, John F. Kennedy University, California, U.S.A.
(**) School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
The purpose of the present study was to explore the nature and experience of aggression and aggressiveness in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) athletes based on the premise that, contrary to the consensus view in general psychology and some misguided arguments in sport psychology, aggression is neither unhealthy nor pathological, but an integral and positive component in some sports. U.S. MMA professionals took part in semi-structured interviews and data analysis involved grounded theory procedures and reversal theory interpretations of results. The results showed that athletes defined aggression in terms of MMA fighting where being aggressive was considered important for successful performance, but only when used cleverly and not as blind aggression. Some athletes experienced higher levels of aggression in practice than in competition where it was important to remain cool and controlled. Athletes' aggression stayed within the bounds of MMA fighting and training and did not appear in other contexts.
Keywords: Aggression, Mixed martial arts, Motivation, Positive aggression experience
Davoud Nikbin *, Sunghyup Sean Hyun **, Ali Albooyeh *** and Behzad Foroughi ****
(*) Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
(**) Pusan National University, South Korea
(***) Islamic Azad University, Zahedan, Iran
(****) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
This study examines the relationship between perceived justice for sports team coaches and athletes’ satisfaction, commitment, effort, and team unity. A questionnaire was utilized to gather data from 161 futsal (10 teams) and volleyball (10 teams) players after a midseason game day in Iran. Data analysis was conducted using the partial least squares method. The results indicate that, as expected, all three dimensions of perceived justice, namely distributive, procedural, and interactional justice, were positively and significantly related to athletes’ satisfaction, commitment, and effort. In addition, procedural justice and interactional justices were positively related to team unity, whereas there was no significant relationship between distributive justice and team unity. These results clearly indicate the important role played by coaches’ distributive, procedural, and interactional justice in building athletes’ satisfaction, commitment, effort, and team unity and have important practical and theoretical implications.
Keywords: Commitment, Effort, Perceived Justice, Satisfaction, Team Unit
Katrien Fransen *, Jens Kleinert **, Lori Dithurbide ***, Norbert Vanbeselaere **** and Filip Boen *
(*) Department of Kinesiology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
(**) Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Köln, Germany
(***) School of Health and Human Performance, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
(****) Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Although collective efficacy has been demonstrated to be an important precursor of team performance, there remains some ambiguity concerning its assessment. Therefore, the main aim of the present study was to test the validity of previous collective efficacy measures. An online survey was completed by 4,451 Flemish players and coaches from nine different team sports. The results revealed two distinct and reliable scales; process-oriented collective efficacy (i.e., the confidence in the team’s skills to accomplish processes that could lead to successes) and outcome-oriented team confidence (i.e., the confidence in the team’s ability to obtain a goal or win a game). Furthermore, we established the validity of a 5-item Observational Collective Efficacy Scale for Sports (OCESS) as short measure of process-oriented collective efficacy. Because the OCESS only includes observable behaviors, this scale has the potential to be a starting point for the development of a continuous in-game measure of collective efficacy.
Keywords: Continuous measure, Dynamic measurements, In-Game variation
Efi Tsitskari *, George Tzetzis ** and Nickos Vernadakis *
(*) Department of Physical Education & Sport Science, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
(**) Department of Physical Education & Sport Science, Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki, Greece
The present study aimed to examine the applicability of the SPEED scale in the context of fans of the professional football clubs in Greece and examine its predictive power on fans behavioral intention to continue attending the team’s games. The proposed by Funk, Filo, Beaton and Pritchard (2009) five-dimensional motivation model used: a) Socialization, b) Performance, c) Excitement, d) Esteem and e) Diversion and ten items, two for each of the motivation facets. Two hundred and thirty nine (N=239) fans of professional soccer league participated in this study. The surveyors randomly selected sections in the venue and approached spectators at their seats before the beginning of the game. The 10 item SPEED scale was used to measure motivation by using the two items of each sub-scale randomly placed. The scale was translated into Greek using the back to back translation procedure. A single item measure was used to rate the fans’ intention to attend future games. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) did not provided support for the factorial validity of the motivational model. The data were then analyzed with an exploratory factor analysis and internal consistency through Cronbach alpha. A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided partial support for the factorial validity of the model. Esteem had a strong influence on intention to continue attending the team’s games. The present study was the first attempt to distribute the SPEED scale to other population than Australian fans, in other geographical region than Australia and to non-English speaking spectators attending a football game in Greece. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed
Keywords: Attendance, Football (soccer), Questionnaire
Jaime Morente-Sánchez *, Manuel Mateo-March **/*** and Mikel Zabala */***
(*) Faculty of Sport Sciences, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
(**) Faculty Miguel Hernández, University of Elche, Valencia, Spain
(***) Spanish Cycling Federation, Madrid, Spain
The aim was to compare attitudes towards doping in cyclists from the Spanish National road cycling teams. 33 cyclists aged 18.62 ± 2.88 years were allocated to four groups (junior men, under-23 men, junior women, and elite women). We used the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS) and a qualitative open-ended questionnaire. The overall PEAS score (17–102) was 34.91 ± 6.62. The word most associated with “doping” was “cheating” (% n: 42.42; % total answers: 14.89%), for “agents responsible for doping” it was “doctor” (84.85%, 30.11%), the “main reason” was “sport achievement” (100%, 50.75%) and the most proposed solution was “more controls” (36.36%; 29.27%). Many riders stated that “cycling and other sports are treated differently” (66.67%, 47.83%). Thus, Spanish elite road cyclists do not support doping, though younger cyclists showed more pro-doping attitudes; alongside controls, early age prevention programs may be effective to educate both cyclists and their close people.
Keywords: Attitudes, cycling, Doping substances, Elite athletes, Prevention