The aim of the study was to examine the psychosometric properties of Italian version of two relevant inventories of the Achievement Goal Theory in sport: the 13-item version of the Task and Ego orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda & Nicholls 1992), and the 29-item version of the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire (Newton & Duda 1993).
Data were collected among 487 athletes (76% males), drawn from a range of different sports, aged 13 to 33 years (mean 16.90 and s.d. 3.65) which mainly compete at the regional level and that were contacted during an usual medical- sport examination.
Exploratory principal components analysis provided acceptable support for the two-dimension structure of the TEOSQ. As well as the internal consistency reliability. Acceptable results were also shown for the general scales of the PMCSQ-2, whereas some doubts remain for his specific scales. At present, this research go on with the involvement of other athletes of different dompetitive level, in training and competition context, to verify by structural equations models, the links between these dimensions and their inventories.

A wide literature confirmed the important role of self and collective efficacy beliefs in influencing motivational, cognitive, and emotional processes that regulate and guide human behaviour. The influence if perceived self- and collective efficacy is particularly crucial in sport activities., as they foster athletes motivation and guarantee their optimal performance . One hundred and five high-level Italian rugby players were involved in the present study, that aims to develop two new instruments for measuring self- and collective efficacy beliefs on rugby and to explore the relationship between efficacy beliefs and athletes ‘ goals setting and pursuing. Results showed the good properties of the new scales and interesting relationship between rugby players self- and collective efficacy beliefs and the goals they set and reached in a specific period of time.

Sport involves the groups and the dynamics of group to many levels and in so many different ways; in the centre of this matter there is the phenomenon of the social influence, that consists in the fact that the behaviour of the individual can be influences by other people (Dweck 1999). Social influence can be seen in the way according to which the teammates interact and they became an united team. Individuals have a need for belongingness and seek out social contexts ( such as sport) in which to satisfy the need (Allen 2003;Baumeister & Leary 1995). In fact, Chelladurai and Riemer (1997) suggest that sport “ may be the only means of meeting an individual’s social needs”, The aim of this study is to analyze some psychological characteristics of the athlete. We verified the hypothesis that the interpersonal adaptation and social agbilities play a main role in the optimization of sport performance. The study was carried out on 85 professional players (21 men and 31 women) , with the administration of two questionnaires: the Test of the Psychological Characteristics on the Sporting Output and the Differential Semantic. Obtained results allow us to confirm the starting hypothesis : some psychological characteristics of the athletes can influence the optimal realization of a sport performance.