Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography.

Thesis (B.A. (Hons.)) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

This thesis examined the psychological responses of injured athletes as a basis for designing theoretically meaningful intervention strategies to expedite recovery from sports injuries. The thesis is written as a series of research papers (studies). The methodological approaches adopted ranged from quasi-experimental to qualitative research in a naturalistic rehabilitation setting. The first study reported the development of a theoretically derived psychometric measure to assess athletes psychological responses to injury, initially using exploratory factor analysis and subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis. The Psychological Responses to Sport Injury Inventory (PRSII) comprised five sub scales (Devastation, Dispirited, Attempts to Rationalise, Isolation and Reorganisation). In its final form the PRSII contained 20 items. The PRSII was found to possess adequate psychometric integrity. The second study examined the effects of a goal-setting intervention on injured athletes rehabilitation adherence, perceptions of self and treatment efficacy and the psychological response variables assessed by the PRSII. The study provided support for the effects of goal-setting upon athlete adherence, self-efficacy, treatment efficacy, and reorganisation. However, the hypothesised effects for dispirited and isolation were not found. As a result, a qualitative follow-up study was conducted to more closely examine the effects of the goal-setting intervention. The qualitative follow-up study proposed a number of possible mechanisms for the effects of the goal-setting intervention. These included the effects of goal-setting on self-efficacy, attributions, perceptions of control, and attention. The final, collaborative action research study employed a multi-modal intervention with three athletes rehabilitating from injury. The efficacy of social support, goal-setting, imagery, simulation training and verbal persuasion emerged from the study. The study highlighted the importance of outcome expectancy and goal flexibility. In relation to the re-entry phase of rehabilitation, confidence in the injured body part, and the ability to meet game demands emerged as important to participants successful return to competition.

The purpose of the investigation was to determine if goal setting has an effect on physical performance in a realistic, natural, and competitive athletic environment. Results revealed no significant differences between the goal-setting group and the "do your best" group when performing lacrosse skills. However, results from the questionnaire indicated significant main effect difficulty of the tasks. These results imply that athletes in the goal-setting group felt that their goals were not realistic and that it was increasingly difficult to reach their goals as the season progressed. Because the athlete does not have control over some factors which influence game situations, he or she may be hindered in reaching his or her goals, whether specified or individually chosen. Therefore, a research methodology that manipulates and attempts to control types of goal setting may not be appropriate or realistic when applied to the natural field environment of a highly organized competitive sport.

No description available.

Goal orientation is a construct that has been used to explain individuals' focus in achievement situations. Three subcomponents of this construct have been linked to a number of training-related processes and outcomes. Those higher on avoid performance goal orientation withdraw from situations in which they may appear incompetent to others. Those higher on prove performance goal orientation approach situations in which they can demonstrate their competence to others. Finally, those high on learning goal orientation approach situations in which they can continually grow and master new skills. Prior research has consistently found that effective learning strategies and outcomes are positively associated with learning goal orientation and negatively associated with avoid goal orientation. However, the findings with respect to prove goal orientation have been mixed. One possible reason for this is that the effect of prove goal orientation may be dependent on one's concurrent level of learning goal orientation. The present study investigated this notion using participants from an understudied population: unemployed adults. Specifically, data were collected from 188 unemployed females who participated in a training program designed to enhance basic work competencies necessary for most entry-level jobs. Results indicated that those higher on avoid performance goal orientation put forth less effort in voluntary practice activities took longer to complete the training program and learned less than those lower on avoid performance goal orientation. Additionally, prove performance goal orientation interacted with learning goal orientation to predict the amount of time spent practicing and learning. Theoretical and practical implications for training needs analysis, development, and assessment will be discussed.

This study examines the transformational behaviors of leaders and the goal commitment of followers. Other constructs of interest are self-efficacy, goal congruence, and power. The central research questions include: 1) What are the effects of transformational leadership behaviors on the commitment of followers to goals?; 2) Do the transformational behaviors of leaders influence the perceptions of followers regarding goal congruence?; 3) Do the transformational behaviors of leaders impact goal commitment of followers through influencing follower self-efficacy?; and 4) What bases of power do leaders possess and draw upon to exert social influence to obtain follower goal commitment? The sites for this study are two types of nonprofit organizations. Local church congregations comprise one and the other is a group of community based hospice organizations. One of the more interesting results found is that two different patterns of relationships exist between the leadership and goal commitment variables for these two sites. / Ph. D.

This study examined the role of attention in goal setting theory, using techniques adapted from selective attention research. Specifically, it explored activation and suppression of goal related information in the presence of two conflicting assigned goals. Pre vs. post goal completion and goal commitment were examined as moderators of these attentional effects. In addition, exploratory analyses looked at the impact of individual differences on attention (goal preference & action-state orientation). Analyses were conducted using three-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), where repeated measures occur within trials, which are nested within individuals. In general, results failed to support the hypotheses. However, weak support was found for attentional effects when commitment was also taken into consideration. Further, while commitment was not found to have the strong moderating influence on attention that was hypothesized, there is some evidence for its overall importance to the attentional mechanism of the goal/performance relationship. / Master of Science

Achievement goal theorists have long argued that individuals’ goal orientations are situated and contextual and can thus be manipulated and shaped by their social learning context (Ames, 1992; Brophy, 2004; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Pintrich, Conley, & Kempler, 2003). However, despite the proliferation of group-based learning in classrooms today and the assumption that cooperative learning promotes student mastery goal orientation for developing competence, “there has been a neglect of the research on motivational processes in group learning contexts within the field of achievement motivation” (Pintrich et al., 2003, p. 329). This dissertation used a mixed methods approach to investigate cooperative groups as subcontexts (Pintrich et al., 2003) within an undergraduate course that incorporates cooperative learning as an instructional tool. From this sample, I investigated whether and how student- and group-level factors were associated with the type of goal orientations that students adopt within and outside their group context by measuring students’ social academic goal orientations (Kim, Kim, & Svinicki, in press) for their cooperative group work and their achievement goal orientations for their general coursework. A total of 96 students agreed to allow their responses to all online course surveys to be used for research purposes. In addition, 2 of 8 groups in which all group members provided consent were selected to participate in individual interviews. In this embedded mixed methods design (Creswell & Clark, 2007), the quantitative data were the primary focus of analysis and the qualitative data were used to enrich and explain the quantitative findings. Multilevel modeling results indicated that both student- and group-level factors significantly and positively predicted students’ social academic goal orientations in their cooperative group work and students’ subsequent achievement goal orientations in their general course. Furthermore, the qualitative findings indicated that students tend to focus on extrinsic and mastery-oriented goals in addition to individual roles within their cooperative groups. The findings from this dissertation lend promising implications for future researchers and practitioners interested in understanding when and how cooperative group work enhances or hinders students’ achievement motivation. / text

Organizations in many domains such as healthcare, finances, telecommunications, educa-tion, and software development, must comply with an ever-increasing number of regula-tions, including laws and policies. In order to measure compliance to regulation, several recent approaches propose modelling regulations using goals and indicators. However, creating goal models for regulations is time consuming and prone to errors, especially as this is usually done manually. This thesis tackles this issue by automating some of the steps for creating goal models, and by offering better ways to create graphical views of goal models than what is currently available nowadays in goal modelling tools. The notation used in this thesis is the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL), which is part of the User Requirements Notation standard and is supported by the jUCMNav tool. The concepts of regulations and their indicators are captured using a tab-ular presentation in Comma-Separated Value (CSV) files. An import mechanism is added to jUCMNav to automatically create regulation goal models from such files. The imported GRL model can then by visualized using novel features that enable the addition of multiple views/diagrams in an efficient and usable way.