An Amotivation Model in Physical Education
Purpose: Amotivation can be defined as a state in which individuals can not perceive a relationship between their behavior and that behavior's subsequent outcome (Deci & Ryan, 2002). Students' amotivation is directly related to boredom, nonattendance, and low involvement. Although amotivation is an important component in Self-Determination Theory, current consideration of it as a one-dimensional construct may neglect the complexity of motivational deficit in physical education. The purpose of this study was to examine a multidimensional model of amotivation.
Methods: Based on Legault et al.'s (2006) taxonomy of academic amotivation and a pilot study, a 16-item amotivation inventory in physical education was developed. These items reflect four dimensions of amotivation: ability beliefs, effort beliefs, characteristics of the task, and value placed on the task.
Analysis/Results: In study 1 (N = 156 high school students), an exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors with eigenvalues greater than one, which accounted for 73.3% of the total item variance and were identical with the structure. In study 2 (N = 499 high school students), the four-demensional model was further corroborated through a confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed the adequacy of the model fitness: the comparative fit index (CFI) = .97, the nonnormed fit index (NNFI) = .95, the standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR) = .09, and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .05, supporting that the identified four factors could be explained by the higher order structure of general amotivation. Cronbach alphas for the ability beliefs, effort beliefs, characteristics of the task, and value placed on the task dimensions were .85, .85, .86, and .89, respectively, indicating the score produced by the model had acceptable internal consistency. In order to test the construct validity of the amotivation model, we assessed correlations among the dimensions of amotivation and teacher ratings of in-class effort. As hypothesized, all four dimensions of amotivation were negatively associated with the in-class effort (|r| ≥ .28, p<.01).
Conclusions: The findings lend evidence to the conceptual validation of the four-dimensional structure of amotivation. Lack of motivation in physical education may result from different reasons. The multifaceted nature of amotivation in physical education must be considered and instructionally addressed during teaching and learning.