Motivation for Participating to Sports Competitions in School.

The purpose of this study was to identify the students' motivation for participating to sports competitions in school. For this approach, we have identified a stratified random sample made up of 515 boys and 338 girls. The questionnaire we have used has included three categories of reasons for the participation to sports actions: social motives, sports motives and health-promotion motives, intrinsic and extrinsic. The data obtained have emphasized positive results for both genders, on the three motivation directions: "fun and joy"; "the wish of being healthy"; "the wish of being part of a team". Motivations such as "the wish of being the best, of being a champion"; "the wish of being popular"; "the wish to compete" were frequent among boys, while girls have mostly social and recreational motives: making new friends, maintaining a health body, fitness. Hence, the combination of the pleasure to participate to the competition and the wish to make new friends are the ways through which we can also increase the number of girls who participate to school competitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]