MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH SPORTS PARTICIPATION AMONG ATHLETES

Background: Successful athletes are motivated for future-oriented for more achievements. Apprehensive athletes are not as successful as highly motivated athletes. The sport participation is influenced by many factors those contribute in success of athletes. Objective: To explore the motivational factors for sports participation among Pakistani athletes. Methodology: The cross-sectional survey was conducted on both male and female athletes (n=400) between the age of 14 to 40 years, played at the national and international levels at least from one year. The study was conducted at the Pakistan sports board (PSB) from July-December 2018. The non-probability convenience sampling was used in this study. The sports participation scale-6 was used to explore the motivational factors. The data was presented as n(%). Results: the mean age of the participants were 24±5.45 years The results showed that the mean scores of six categories of Sports Motivational Scale (SMS) was 134.69±13.431, which showed that majority of athletes were highly motivated. The result of the study also showed that all subdomain of sports motivation scale positively correlated to total score (p<0.001), while a motivation was negatively associated r=-0.701, p<0.001) with total score of sports motivation scale. Although most of the athletes were normal in term of depression, anxiety, and stress. But depression is negatively correlated (r=-0.09, p=0.04) with sports motivation. Conclusion: This study concluded that most athletes are motivated because hard training improves their performance and other motivational factors are also associated like pleasure, internal satisfaction, and excitement. The least motivational factor was achieving social or material benefits of being an athlete. Keywords: Athlete, motivation, participation, stress.