Goal Orientation in Lifesaving Athletes

The aims of this papers are two: 1) To study goal orientation in Lifesaving practitioners and 2) to analyze the differences in goal orientation depending of variables? such as sex, age and sport specialty.

Participants were 136 specialists swimmers in Rescue and Lifesaving, from youth (from 15 to 16 years) to junior (from 17 to 18 years) category. The Perception of Success Questionnaire (POSQ) was used to ask the objective of this research; also an internal consistency analysis of the instrument and a descriptive analysis of all variables were performed. A t-test for independent samples was used to confirm differences between groups.

The significance level was set at p ≤ .05. In general, the results showed dispositional at task-orientation. Gender differences were found in pool and beach specialists but none between the age categories. The results show strong sport motivation that favours sport for pleasure minimizing demotivation and dropout.