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The impact of student goal orientation in physical education classes.

The theory of achievement motivation suggests that students whose goals are related to the mastery of a task are more likely to engage in adaptive patterns of behavior such as choosing challenging tasks and focusing on effort. Students whose goal orientations are ego-involved are more apt to avoid challenge and be unwilling to expend effort. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact that goal perspective has in physical education classes. Subjects (N = 90) were college students in beginning tennis classes. They completed a skill pretest and the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda, 1992). A system of contract grading was employed to yield an indication of students' selection of challenging tasks. The points earned toward the contracts were used as an indicant of in-class behavior. At the end of the semester, students completed a skill posttest and a cognitive processes questionnaire. A task-involved goal perspective was associated with the selection of more challenging tasks and positive scores on the questionnaire. Those two variables, in turn, were significant predictors of student achievement. The results suggest that goal perspective could be an important influence on students' thought and action in physical education classes.

Achievement↗

Contextual influences and goal perspectives among female youth sport participants.

This study investigated two research questions: (1) do goal involvement and state anxiety vary between athletic games and athletic practices? and (2) do goal orientations change over the course of a competitive season as a function of the perceived team motivational climate? Middle school athletes (n = 127) were assessed on goal orientations, goal involvement, state anxiety, and motivational climate. Results indicated that athletes were more task involved and less anxious in practice than in game situations, and task goal orientation changed over the season relative to perceptions of mastery and performance climates. These results may indicate that sport offers an environment different from the academic setting and that mainstream psychology theories need to be adapted for the sport context.

Adolescent↗

The development of self-perceptions of ability and achievement goals and their relations in physical education.

This study examined the development of self-perceptions of ability and achievement goals and their relationships in physical education. Three hundred and eight students in 4th, 8th, and 11th grades completed questionnaires assessing their goal orientations, conceptions of ability, and perceived competence in physical education. Analyses assessing grade-related changes in conceptions of ability and achievement goals showed that as the students progressed from grades 4 through 11, they were more likely to: (a) interpret ability as a stable capacity that may limit or increase the effect of effort on performance and (b) become ego-oriented. Analyses assessing relationships between variables of interest across grade level revealed that achievement goals were related to different conceptions of ability, students' self-ratings were significantly positively correlated to their teachers' ratings of their competence, and no consistent relationships emerged between achievement goals and perceived competence.

Achievement↗

Influence of social goal orientations and peers on unsportsmanlike play.

The present study was designed to examine the influence of personal (i.e., social goal orientations or definitions of success that include interpersonal relationships) and situational (i.e., peer influence) factors on decisions surrounding unsportsmanlike play. Middle school students (ages 11-15 years) completed a measure to assess task, ego, and social goal orientations. Participants also read scenarios about unsportsmanlike actions and responded to questions tapping the intention to perform those actions. A series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that in certain peer contexts, social goal orientations influenced unsportsmanlike play responses above and beyond the contribution of task and ego goal orientations. Results varied/for boys and girls and provide support far including social goal orientations in achievement motivation research in the physical domain.

Achievement↗

Goal specificity effects on hypothesis testing in problem solving.

Previous research has found that having a nonspecific goal (NSG) leads to better problem solving and transfer than having a specific goal (SG). To distinguish between the various explanations of this effect requires direct evidence showing how a NSG affects a participant's behaviour. Therefore we collected verbal protocols from participants learning to control a linear system consisting of 3 outputs by manipulating 3 inputs. This system was simpler than the one we had used previously, so in Exp. 1 we generalized our earlier goal specificity findings to this system. In Exp. 2 protocol analysis confirmed our prediction (based on dual-space theories of problem solving) that NSG participants focused on hypothesis testing whereas SG participants focused on the goal. However, this difference only emerged over time. We also replicated the goal specificity effect on performance and showed that giving participants a hypothesis to test improved performance.

Goals↗

Dual-goal facilitation in Wason's 2-4-6 task: what mediates successful rule discovery?

The standard 2-4-6 task requires discovery of a single rule and produces success rates of about 20%, whereas the dual-goal (DG) version requests discovery of two complementary rules and elevates success to over 60%. The experiment examined two explanations of DG superiority: Evans' (1989) positivity-bias account, and Wharton, Cheng, and Wickens' (1993) goal-complementarity theory. Two DG conditions were employed that varied the linguistic labelling of rules (either positively labelled Dax vs. Med, or mixed-valence "fits" vs. "does not fit"). Solution-success results supported the goal-complementarity theory since facilitation arose in both DG conditions relative to single-goal tasks, irrespective of the linguistic labelling of hypotheses. DG instructions also altered quantitative and qualitative aspects of hypothesis-testing behaviour, and analyses revealed the novel result that the production of at least a single descending triple mediates between DG instructions and task success. We propose that the identification of an appropriate contrast class that delimits the scope of complementary rules may be facilitated through the generation of a descending instance. Overall, our findings can best be accommodated by Oaksford and Chater's (1994) iterative counterfactual model of hypotheses testing, which can readily subsume key elements of the goal-complementarity theory.

Analysis of Variance↗

Classifying client goals in community-based ABI rehabilitation: a taxonomy for profiling service delivery and conceptualizing outcomes.

PURPOSE: To develop, confirm and trial a framework for analysing the content of goals set within community-based rehabilitation. This framework (taxonomy) is proposed as a tool to assist in service evaluation and outcome exploration. METHOD: Qualitative thematic analysis and categorization of 1765 rehabilitation goal statements in a four phase process of synthesis, refinement, verification and application. RESULTS: A taxonomy of goal content was developed comprising 21 categories within five domains, utilizing 125 descriptors. The taxonomy demonstrated good inter-rater consistency and was able to discriminate between similar but related data sets comprising goal statements. CONCLUSION: Structured analysis of the content of goal setting (particularly in community rehabilitation) utilizing a framework such as the proposed taxonomy has considerable potential as a 'window' into service delivery to broaden the parameters of existing service evaluation and to more clearly link outcome exploration to intervention.

Activities of Daily Living↗

An integrate-and-fire model of prefrontal cortex neuronal activity during performance of goal-directed decision making.

The orbital frontal cortex appears to be involved in learning the rules of goal-directed behavior necessary to perform the correct actions based on perception to accomplish different tasks. The activity of orbitofrontal neurons changes dependent upon the specific task or goal involved, but the functional role of this activity in performance of specific tasks has not been fully determined. Here we present a model of prefrontal cortex function using networks of integrate-and-fire neurons arranged in minicolumns. This network model forms associations between representations of sensory input and motor actions, and uses these associations to guide goal-directed behavior. The selection of goal-directed actions involves convergence of the spread of activity from the goal representation with the spread of activity from the current state. This spiking network model provides a biological implementation of the action selection process used in reinforcement learning theory. The spiking activity shows properties similar to recordings of orbitofrontal neurons during task performance.

Action Potentials↗

Diabetes self-care goals and their relation to children's metabolic control.

Undertook a goal systems analysis in order to elucidate the nature of diabetic children's cognitive representations of their health-related activities. Using a modified version of Little's (1983) Personal Projects Analysis methodology, youngsters with Type I diabetes were asked to sort health-care goals into self-selected versus imposed categories. Goal dimension differences were compared via t tests, revealing that children make clear evaluative distinctions among types of diabetes-care activities. Factor analyses further revealed distinct conceptualizations for "told to do" versus "want to do" goals. When metabolic control (as measured by glycosolated hemoglobin assays) was regressed on the derived factors for selected and imposed self-care goals, none of the self-selected (want to do) factors, but two of the three imposed (told to do) factors, contributed significantly to variance in HbAlc. Implications and design limitations are discussed.

Adolescent↗

Goal attainment scaling as a measure of change in infants with motor delays.

Goal attainment scaling (GAS) is an individualized criterion-referenced measure of change that has several unique features, compared with the behavioral objective, and five possible levels of attainment for each goal. The validity of GAS as a measure of motor change was investigated in 65 infants, 3 to 30 months of age, with motor delays. For each infant, two goals to be attained within a 6-month period of intervention were established. After the 6-month period, the mean GAS T-score of 55.4 was significantly higher than the expected mean of 50. This finding indicated that the infants' motor change exceeded the therapists' expectations. Neither the type nor the category of goal influenced the therapists' ability to select outcomes that the infants were capable of achieving. Because moderate and low correlations were found between GAS T-scores and Peabody gross motor and fine motor change scores, the two assessments appear to measure different aspects of motor development. Selected child, family, and program variables were examined as sources of bias in GAS T-scores. Motor delay was the only variable that biased GAS T-scores; infants who were less delayed had higher GAS T-scores. The results indicate that GAS was responsive to change in individualized motor goals and support the model of GAS as an idiosyncratic measure. The unique features of GAS offer advantages for measurement of motor change compared with the behavioral objective and norm-referenced developmental scales.

Bias↗

Self-regulation and goal theories in brain injury rehabilitation.

Goal planning is a central concept in the clinical practice of rehabilitation. Several disciplines within psychology and medicine have elaborated theories related to goal attainment and self-regulation, the process of managing one's own goal-directed behavior. These theories may be highly relevant to brain injury rehabilitation both to help address characteristic deficits in executive function and to teach clients how to manage life tasks outside of formal rehabilitation. In this article, we describe testable, theoretically motivated interventions at 2 levels: the goal level focused on attaining or enhancing performance on individual tasks and the self-regulation level of metacognitive processes involved in planning and managing one's own goal-directed behavior. We also discuss issues in experimental methodology that are important to adapting this area of research to brain injury rehabilitation, including consideration of cognitive status and other individual differences in selecting the participant sample, choice of between-subjects versus within-subjects experimental design, and selection of appropriate outcome measures.

Brain Injuries↗

Improvement scaling (rehabilitation version). A new approach to measuring progress of patients in achieving their individual rehabilitation goals.

OBJECTIVES: Accurate measurement of clinically relevant change in individual patients undergoing rehabilitation has been an elusive goal. Simple, clinically meaningful, patient-centered measures of individual patient change are urgently needed. The purpose of this research was the development and testing of Improvement Scaling (Rehabilitation Version)(IMS), a new approach to measuring the progress that rehabilitation patients make during treatment. METHODS: Research and clinical staff developed the 65 IMS scales and applied them to all admissions to an an inpatient rehabilitation unit. Date were collected on 292 consecutively admitted rehabilitation patients who were aged 50 or older. An Improvement Score indicates the degree to which each patient achieves the expected level of outcome on his or her unique set of IMS goals. Improvement scores were compared to Goal Attainment Scores and to scores from more traditional measures. Interrater reliability was assessed. RESULTS: IMS scores correlated r = .78 with comparable Goal Attainment Scores. IMS and Goal Attainment Scores had the same pattern of correlations with other measures. Interrater reliability of IMS scores was r = .91. CONCLUSIONS: IMS appears to be a practical, reliable, valid, and clinically useful technique for measuring individual patient change. What is needed now is replication and more information on factors which may influence IMS scores. Versions of IMS are being developed for home health care and mental health. Applications of IMS for quality assurance, quality improvement, and documentation of patient change for third parties is discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗

A cross-cultural analysis of avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals.

The results from this research supported our primary hypothesis that the adoption of avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals varies as a function of individualism-collectivism (across representations of this distinction). Interdependent self-construals were positively related and independent self-construals were negatively related to adoption of avoidance goals (Study 1), Asian Americans adopted more avoidance goals than non-Asian Americans (Study 2), andpersonsfrom South Korea and Russia adopted more avoidance goals than those in the United States (Studies 3 and 4, respectively). Studies 3 and 4 investigated andfound supportfor our secondary hypothesis that avoidance personal goals are a negative predictor of subjective well-being in individualistic (the United States), but not collectivistic (South Korea and Russia), countries. The findings are discussed in terms of other approach-avoidance constructs and motivational processes.

Achievement↗

Survey of hospital doctors' training goals in diagnosis and management of pulmonary diseases.

Although subspecialty training goals for junior hospital doctors have not been evaluated, they are potentially useful for assessing clinical competence. A questionnaire was sent to medical residents, full-time pulmonary teaching staff, and community-based physicians who were asked to rate the importance of diagnosing and managing selected pulmonary diseases for the future practices of young hospital doctors. The latter also rated their perceived preparedness for the same training goals. Generally good intra- and intergroup agreement about the relevance of most of the training goals was observed, although the hospital doctors rated a greater number of items to be more important than did the two other groups. This finding may be attributed to institutional influences and to many clinical abilities expected of all physicians. Immunological or fibrotic and paediatric respiratory disorders were rated least important by most respondents. The hospital doctors disagreed on the basis of the distribution of their ratings about their preparedness for the same goals, which probably reflects varying training experiences and background. The process of developing general professional training goals in a subspecialty requires discussion, identification, and consensus to identify and potentially correct areas of weakness, with allowance for institutional training patterns. A survey such as described in this study can provide data that can help measure clinical competence and support or define curricular changes.

California↗

Residents' training goals in respiratory knowledge and skills: perspective of three parties.

Medical residents, full-time respiratory teaching staff, and community-based doctors rated the importance of fifty-five respiratory training goals involving knowledge and skills necessary for the future practices of all medical residents. Residents also rated their perceived preparedness in these training areas. Intra- and inter-group analyses indicated that residents agreed more often, and consistently assigned more importance (94% of goals) to the training goals, than did the teachers and doctors. Although the residents considered themselves prepared for 69% of the training goals, they also had moderate intra-group disagreement. These results may reflect variable training experiences and/or institutional practices, but areas of less than adequate preparation were identified and can be corrected. The other two groups were in general agreement except regarding some clinical skills. This study offers possible explanations for the group responses and indicates the potential benefit for groups to discuss, identify, and survey training goals.

California↗

Cost-effectiveness of asthma control: an economic appraisal of the GOAL study.

BACKGROUND: The Gaining Optimal Asthma ControL (GOAL) study has shown the superiority of a combination of salmeterol/fluticasone propionate (SFC) compared with fluticasone propionate alone (FP) in terms of improving guideline defined asthma control. METHODS: Clinical and economic data were taken from the GOAL study, supplemented with data on health related quality of life, in order to estimate the cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) results for each of three strata (previously corticosteroid-free, low- and moderate-dose corticosteroid users). A series of statistical models of trial outcomes was used to construct cost effectiveness estimates across the strata of the multinational GOAL study including adjustment to the UK experience. Uncertainty was handled using the non-parametric bootstrap. Cost-effectiveness was compared with other treatments for chronic conditions. RESULT: Salmeterol/fluticasone propionate improved the proportion of patients achieving totally and well-controlled weeks resulting in a similar QALY gain across the three strata of GOAL. Additional costs of treatment were greatest in stratum 1 and least in stratum 3, with some of the costs offset by reduced health care resource use. Cost-effectiveness by stratum was 7600 pound (95% CI: 4800-10,700 pound) per QALY gained for stratum 3; 11,000 pound (8600-14,600 pound) per QALY gained for stratum 2; and 13,700 pound (11,000-18,300 pound) per QALY gained for stratum 1. CONCLUSION: The GOAL study previously demonstrated the improvement in total control associated with the use of SFC compared with FP alone. This study suggests that this improvement in control is associated with cost-per-QALY figures that compare favourably with other uses of scarce health care resources.

Albuterol↗

A case study of health goals in New Zealand.

OBJECTIVE: This paper outlines the New Zealand experience in using health goals and examines its strengths and weaknesses from an 'insiders's' perspective. METHOD: This paper reports on a review of the New Zealand health goals framework conducted in 1996-97. The review centred on a discussion paper, written submissions on it, and consultation meetings with the public, the public health sector and relevant government agencies. RESULTS: It is argued that the framework usefully shaped public health activity in New Zealand and should be retained with a focus on strengthening public health action. Health goals have been developed in New Zealand at a time of considerable change in the health sector. Although this change has been disruptive, it has also provided benefits such as the emergence of new providers. The strengths of the New Zealand framework have included: its inclusiveness, the consultation that occurred in developing it, and the monitoring and reporting system. Ongoing challenges, such as reorienting the health sector and developing a formal intersectoral strategy, are also identified. CONCLUSION: The paper concludes that the current health goals framework has the potential to frame future public health action in New Zealand, but that the increasing mainstreaming of the public health function poses some risk. IMPLICATIONS: The insight provided by the New Zealand case on the implementation of a health goals framework may assist public health planners in other jurisdictions.

Forecasting↗

Modifications in children's goals when encountering obstacles to conflict resolution.

Previous studies have demonstrated that children's goals are associated with their success in peer relationships. The current study extends earlier findings by examining changes in children's goals during hypothetical conflicts. Participants were 252 children ages 9 to 12 years old (133 boys, 119 girls). As predicted, children's goals changed significantly when they encountered obstacles to conflict resolution, and these changes were predictive of their subsequent strategy choices. Both aggressive- and submissive-rejected children were more likely to evidence antisocial changes in their goals, including an increased desire to retaliate. They also showed reluctance to forego instrumental objectives. Other findings highlighted the need to investigate the combinations of goals children pursue as predictors of their strategies and the quality of their peer relationships.

Aggression↗