Demographic differences in motivational climates, basic psychological needs and cohesion in young people

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze the behavior of the variables of motivational climate (empowering and disempowering), psychological needs (satisfaction and frustration) and cohesion (task and social) as a function of sex (men and women), nature of physical activity (group-individual sport and physical education) and years of sport experience (4 years or less, 5 years or more); in addition, to analyze the interrelation between the psychological variables. A total of 237 young Mexican athletes (Mage = 12.22, SD = 1.27) of elementary level participated. The result show that: 1) respect to the differences according to gender there were no significant differences; 2) with respect to the nature of the activity, there were differences between all the psychological variables; 3) according to the years of experience, only the empowering climate showed a significant difference, being greater in the athletes with fewer years of experience. Regarding the interaction between variables, there was evidence of a positive relationship between the empowering climate, NPB satisfaction and both cohesions, as well as the disempowering climate and NPB frustration. In order to be conclusive about these results, further research is needed.