Empowering and disempowering, sastisfaction, frustration, motivation and future intention to practice in Paralympians. Demographic differences

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze of empowering and disempowering motivational climates, satisfaction or frustration of the basic psychological needs, motivation types, and intention to continue or abandon physical activity practice behavior as a function of gender and disability type; additionally, to analyze psychological variables interaction between them. 90 Mexican paralympic athletes participated, (Mage = 29.06, SD = 8.91. Results confirm that: 1) there are not significant gender differences, nevertheless, magnitude analysis showed greater empowering climate, autonomous and controlled motivation in men than women. 2) There are differences in empowering climate and controlled motivation according to disability type, highlighting that empowering climate is only different between wheelchair and cerebral paralysis athletes. Regarding the psychological variables' interrelation, there are positive interaction between empowering climate and autonomous motivation, disempowering climate and controlled motivation, basic psychological needs frustration and controlled motivation, which in turn is related to intention to abandon. For the above, it is important to mention the role that coaches play in the sports context, promoting a higher quality in the athlete's sports involvement, allowing in turn a future intention to practice sports.