Research methods in sport and exercise psychology: quantitative and qualitative issues.

Contemporary aspects of research methods in sport and exercise psychology are discussed in this wide-ranging review. After an introduction centred on trends in sport and exercise psychology methods, the review is organized around the major themes of quantitative and qualitative research. Our aim is to highlight areas that may be problematic or controversial (e.g. stepwise statistical procedures), underused (e.g. discriminant analysis), increasingly used (e.g. meta-analysis, structural equation modelling, qualitative content analysis) and emergent (e.g. realist tales of writing). Perspectives range from the technical and speculative to the controversial and critical. While deliberately not providing a 'cookbook' approach to research methods, we hope to provide enough material to help researchers to appreciate the diversity of potential methods and to adopt a more critical perspective in their own research consumption and production.

The development and initial validation of the Exercise Causality Orientations Scale.

Deci and Ryan's causality orientations theory suggests that there are individual differences in motivational orientation towards initiating and regulating behaviour. They described three causality orientations: autonomy, control and impersonal. The aim of this paper is to describe the development and concurrent validity of the Exercise Causality Orientations Scale (ECOS), which was designed to measure the strength of these three orientations within exercise. Altogether, 592 working adults aged 35.0 +/- 11.4 years (mean +/- s) completed the ECOS and measures of self-determination, self-consciousness and social desirability. The analysis was conducted in two parts. First, the data were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis using a multi-trait, multi-method framework. The original model resulted in a poor fit to the data. On the basis of its modification indices, three scenarios with ambiguous items were removed successively, resulting in a scale with good psychometric properties. Secondly, Pearson's correlations were conducted between the subscales of the ECOS and those of the questionnaires used for validation. Most of the results supported a priori hypotheses. In conclusion, our results show the ECOS to have good psychometric properties and they provide some support for its concurrent validity.

The effect of prescribed and preferred intensity exercise on psychological affect and the influence of baseline measures of affect.

This study compared the effects of 20 minutes of treadmill exercise at a prescribed intensity exercise (65% VO(2)max) and a preferred intensity exercise on psychological affect and exercise enjoyment in aerobically fit individuals. Affect was measured before exercise, at 5-minute intervals during exercise and 5 minutes post-exercise. Heart rate, ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) and enjoyment were also measured during each session. Results indicated that there was no difference in psychological affect or enjoyment between the two exercise sessions, although work rate was higher in the preferred condition. However, pre-exercise values of affect played an influential role in the affective response to exercise. These results suggest that allowing fit individuals to select their own exercise intensity may be more beneficial physiologically and psychologically.

Exercise motives and stages of change.

The aim was to examine how exercise motives differ across stages of change. British government employees completed questionnaires measuring exercise motives and exercise stage of change at baseline (N = 425) and at 3-month follow-up (247 of the original sample). Discriminant analysis was used to determine whether exercise motives (and age and gender) could collectively discriminate between baseline stages of change; and whether exercise motives could discriminate between those who stayed inactive, stayed active, became active or became inactive over the 3 months. Taken as a whole, and with some qualifications, the results suggest that extrinsic (specifically bodily) motives dominate during the early stages of exercise adoption, but that intrinsic (specifically enjoyment) motives are important for progression to and maintenance of actual activity. This is consistent with Deci and Ryan's (1985) self- determination theory. The implications for exercise promotion are discussed.

On the factorial and construct validity of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory: conceptual and operational concerns.

The Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) has been gaining acceptance in the sport and exercise domain since the publication of research by McAuley, Duncan, and Tammen (1989) and McAuley, Wraith, and Duncan (1991), which reported confirmatory support for the factorial validity of a hierarchical model of intrinsic motivation. Authors of the present study argue that the results of these studies did not conclusively support the hierarchical model and that the model did not accurately reflect the tenets of cognitive evaluation theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) from which the IMI is drawn. It is also argued that a measure of perceived locus of causality is required to model intrinsic motivation properly. The development of a perceived locus of causality for exercise scale is described, and alternative models, in which perceived competence and perceived locus of causality are held to have causal influences on intrinsic motivation, are compared with an oblique confirmatory factor analytic model in which the constructs are held at the same conceptual level. Structural equation modeling showed support for a causal model in which perceived locus of causality mediates the effects of perceived competence on pressure-tension, interest-enjoyment, and effort-importance. It is argued that conceptual and operational problems with the IMI, as currently used, should be addressed before it becomes established as the instrument of choice for assessing levels of intrinsic motivation.

Anxiety, relaxation and anaesthesia for day-case surgery.

It is recognized that pre-operative anxiety can have adverse effects on the course and outcome of surgery and there is a considerable amount of research into the influences of interventions for pre-operative anxiety on a number of post-operative variables. However, little attention has been paid to the potential influences of treatments on intra-operative variables, most notably on the facilitation of anaesthesia. The present study examined the impact of a brief relaxation procedure on anaesthesia in comparison to attention-control and no-treatment control procedures. A sample of 21 patients about to undergo anaesthesia for day-case surgery were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. It was found that the relaxation treatment significantly reduced pre-operative anxiety as measured by the state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983). This reduction was reflected in physiological indicators of anxiety. Both the relaxation group and the attention-control group required significantly less time to induce anaesthesia and less of the anaesthetic agent used to maintain anaesthesia. The relaxation group also scored significantly lower than the no-treatment control group on an anaesthetist's rating of difficulty of maintenance of anaesthesia. Whilst the relaxation treatment appeared to have no advantages over the attention-control procedure in terms of anaesthetic requirements, the latter treatment did not reduce anxiety and showed no benefit over the no-treatment control condition in terms of an anaesthetist's rating of difficulty of maintenance of anaesthesia. In addition, following recovery the relaxation subjects reported more favourable perceptions of their treatment than the attention-control subjects.