The relationship between sports motivation and psychological characteristics in adolescent athletes

The study of motivational processes in sports is very actual, but determining the motivational structure of an athlete requires the search for special statistical approaches. The authors of the article set the goal of the study – to investigate the relationship between sports motivation and psychological characteristics and to search for statistical approaches to achieve this goal. The article presents the results of a survey of 17 skiers (12 of them boys) and 17 swimmers (9 of them boys) aged 13-16 years. The subjects filled out questionnaires: the Sports Motivation Scale, the Tolerance–Intolerance to Uncertainty Questionnaire, the Resilience Test, the Exercise Addiction Inventory, the Self– loathing Scale Questionnaire, the Motivation Orientation Scale when making a mistake, the Spielberger-Khanin anxiety questionnaire and the Temperament Diagnostic Questionnaire. The authors of the article revealed that: 1) athletes aged 13-16 who are prone to developing sports addiction, along with internal factors (high scores on the scale of "Emotional stimulation"), have an external motivational factor – " The obligation ", 2) the homogeneous majority of athletes in relation to "Learning new things" revealed high levels of "Focus on learning from mistakes" and "Tolerance to uncertainty", 3) the homogeneous majority of athletes with respect to "Self-development" revealed low levels of "Tolerance to uncertainty", "Resilience" and "Engagement". The study shows the relationship of internal and external motivation with dependence on sports, which indicates the need to pay special attention to the motivation of an athlete, taking into account the risk of developing sports addiction. The paper proposes an effective approach – PLS analysis with multidimensional scaling for studies in groups of subjects with high uniformity. The obtained data contribute to the discussion about the similarity of the psychophysiological mechanisms of chemical and behavioral types of addictions