An empirical analysis of gender differences in sports attendance motives

In Australia, male sports attendees outnumber female sports attendees by 25%, yet little research has been conducted into the attendance motives of women. This study undertakes an analysis of 460 respondents using descriptive and multivariate statistics to distinguish the attendance motivations of women and compare them directly to those of male attendees. The findings suggest that female attendance can be influenced through management and promotional strategies.

The influence of Sport Education on student motivation in physical education

Background: Physical educators are faced with trying to provide motivating and enjoyable experiences in physical education. Sport Education is an instructional model that aims to provide positive motivational sport experiences by simulating the features of authentic sport. Research support for Sport Education is positive, however, the effects on student motivation and the motivational climate are not well understood.

Purpose: To investigate the influence of the Sport Education model on student motivation (intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, goal orientations, and perceived motivational climate) in secondary physical education.

Setting: Six classes were selected according to teacher and class availability in the sports of soccer, hockey, and football codes in a co-educational government school.

Participants: Participants were 115 (male = 97, female = 18) Year-8 students (aged 13-14 years), in a Sport Education condition (n = 41) and a Traditional condition (n = 74).

Measures: At pre- and post-test, all participants completed three questionnaires: the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire, and the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire.

Intervention: Participants completed either a Sport Education condition or a Traditional condition for one double period (100 minutes) one day per week for 10 weeks (Sport Education condition) or for five weeks (Traditional condition). The Sport Education condition incorporated six distinctive features: seasons, affiliation, formal competition, record keeping, festivity, and a culminating event. The Traditional condition used whole-group instruction led by the teacher.

Research design: The study used a non-equivalent control group design with pre- and post-test procedures. The independent variable was teaching condition and the dependent variable was student motivation (assessed by intrinsic motivation, goal orientations, and motivational climate). The groups were already established and selected for convenience purposes.

Data collection and analysis: Participants completed pre-test measures and then participated in their pre-established classes. Post-test measures were completed in the last class in each condition. A reliability analysis on measures was conducted using Cronach's alphas. A pre-test manipulation check was performed to check for any initial differences in motivation. To compare the difference in changes between conditions on motivation, a series of 2 times 2 repeated measures analyses of variance were conducted. A comparison of the relationship between motivation measures was conducted using Pearson's product moment correlation coefficients.

Findings: There was a significant difference between the conditions on changes in perceived competence, task orientation, and mastery climate, with the Traditional condition decreasing significantly from pre- to post-test compared with the Sport Education condition. There were no significant differences on interest/enjoyment, effort/importance, pressure/tension, ego orientation, or performance climate. A mastery climate was positively related to task orientation and intrinsic motivation and a performance climate was related to ego orientation.

Conclusions: The Sport Education condition was more successful in maintaining high levels of intrinsic motivation, task orientation, and mastery climate than the Traditional condition. That is, the Traditional condition was associated with a decrease in adaptive aspects of motivation for students, whereas the Sport Education condition maintained existing levels of motivation.

Prevalence of health promotion policies in sports clubs in Victoria, Australia

In recent years, some health agencies offered sponsorship to sporting associations to promote healthy environments by encouraging clubs to develop health-related policies. However, the extent to which these sponsorship contracts reach their stated aims is of concern. This study aimed to quantify levels of policy development and practice in sports clubs for each of five key health areas, namely smoke-free facilities, sun protection, healthy catering, responsible serving of alcohol and sports injury prevention. Representatives from 932 Victorian sports clubs were contacted by telephone with 640 clubs (69%) participating in the survey. Results suggested that the establishment of written policies on the key health areas by sports clubs varied widely by affiliated sport and health area: 70% of all clubs with bar facilities had written policies on responsible serving of alcohol, ranging from 58% of tennis clubs to 100% of diving and surfing clubs. In contrast, approximately one-third of sports clubs had a smoke-free policy, with 36% of tennis, 28% of country football and 28% of men's cricket clubs having policy. Moreover, 34% of clubs overall had established sun protection policy, whereas clubs competing outside during summer months, [diving (86%) and life-saving (81%)] were most likely to have a written sun protection policy. Injury prevention policies were established in 30% of sports clubs, and were most common among football (56%), diving (43%) and life-saving (41%). This study suggests that policy development for health promotion can be achieved in sports clubs when it is well supported by health agencies and consideration is given to the appropriateness of the specific behaviours to be encouraged for a given sport. Communication between associations and clubs needs to be monitored by health agencies to ensure support and resources for policy development to reach the club level.

Government influence on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in environmental social marketing

There is a need for more effective and efficient social behavioural change programs instigated by public sector environmental management organisations. The concepts of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation have been shown to provide insights into the environmental behaviour of various groups. The aim of the paper is to investigate the relationship between Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation and Government influence. In particular this study examines the inter-relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in environmental management. A random sample of 566 land managers in South-eastern Australia was obtained. A structural equation model was used to develop a model which identities the relationship between intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and government influence.

Using decision-tree to automatically construct learned-heuristics for events classification in sports video

Automatic events classification is an essential requirement for constructing an effective sports video summary. It has become a well-known theory that the high-level semantics in sport video can be “computationally interpreted” based on the occurrences of specific audio and visual features which can be extracted automatically. State-of-the-art solutions for features-based event classification have only relied on either manual-knowledge based heuristics or machine learning. To bridge the gaps, we have successfully combined the two approaches by using learning-based heuristics. The heuristics are constructed automatically using decision tree while manual supervision is only required to check the features and highlight contained in each training segment. Thus, fully automated construction of classification system for sports video events has been achieved. A comprehensive experiment on 10 hours video dataset, with five full-match soccer and five full-match basketball videos, has demonstrated the effectiveness/robustness of our algorithms.

Bioanalytical experiments for the undergraduate laboratory : monitoring glucose in sports drinks

This paper describes two complementary bioanalytical experiments for analyzing the concentration of glucose in sports drinks. The first experiment is a spectrophotometric enzyme assay employing the enzymes glucose oxidase (GOx) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP). The glucose is oxidized by the GOx, producing hydrogen peroxide, which is the substrate for HRP. In the reduction of the H2O2 a chromogen is oxidized, causing a color change. In the partner experiment, the GOx is immobilized on a platinum electrode using a dialysis membrane. The hydrogen peroxide produced in the enzyme reaction is monitored amperometrically by oxidizing the hydrogen peroxide produced. The simple method of preparing the enzyme electrode is useful in demonstrating the important parameters in defining the response of enzyme electrodes. The same sports drinks are analyzed in both experiments. The two experiments together illustrate the advantage of bioanalysis in analyzing complex samples with minimal sample preparation.

Consumer motivation in a tourism context : continuing the work of Maslow, Rokeach, Vroom, Deci, Haley and others

This paper examines the literature on understanding and measuring consumer motivation and the application of these theories and procedures to understanding and researching tourist motivation. The application of consumer motivation theory to tourism is considered especially relevant, because motivation is considered a critical variable in the tourist decision-making process.

When understanding and predicting consumer and tourist behaviour, some measures are considered superior to others and this will be examined in this paper. Also many measures of motivation are often used as one of the segmentation bases for tourist and other consumer markets, thereby indicating a strong relationship between motivation and market segmentation, also to be discussed in this paper.

The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to investigate what standards or consensus for determining consumer motivation have emerged in the academic marketing literature, (2) to review the theoretical knowledge about approaches and procedures for determining and measuring consumer motivation in general and their application to understanding tourist motivation (3) to suggest implications for future research of consumer motivation in a tourism context.

Social entrepreneurship and innovation in sports

This paper introduces the topic of sports entrepreneurship to the reader and discusses the importance of having a social entrepreneurial orientation in sports. The issues why individuals and organisations pursue business ventures in sports are addressed with a focus on the social and economic opportunities existing for sports entrepreneurs. A social institutional perspective of sport entrepreneurship is also addressed in the paper that highlights the role of sport in society. Entrepreneurial sport ventures are then examined which leads to a discussion of research opportunities and practical implications of sport in relation to social entrepreneurship and innovation.

The role of motivation in change management : an exploration of the not-for-profit context

While previous studies have highlighted the importance of knowledge enhancement in the social change process the motivation of key stakeholders has also been identified as playing a pivotal role. To gain a deeper understanding of this process a conceptual model, was operationalised to explore the mechanism where by knowledge enhancement might lead to behavioural change. In this paper we discuss the application of the social marketing framework MOA (motivation, opportunity and ability) with a particular focus on the motivation component of the model. Motivation is considered from the perspectives of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Although the degree or level of motivation has previously been used in the operationalisation of the construct for motivation, a deeper understanding of this construct is developed for an environmental program as an increasing number of environmental programs claim to have adopted a social marketing approach. The key objectives which are explored in this paper involve the development of MOA constructs, with a particular focus on Motivation, including Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation. An understanding of the factors that increase the likelihood of ineffective behaviour and the development of a model to understand the behaviour change process. Scales were developed to investigate the relationship between the MOA constructs, including intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and the respondents control behaviour. Data were collected from a random sample of 566 respondents who were involved in a environmental land management program. Using ANOVA and MANOVA techniques, significant differences were found between compliant and non compliant stakeholders with regard to all MOA constructs. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this study with particular reference to environmental programs have adopted the social marketing approach.

Badminton in sports hall SFX

A sound recording of a sports hall filled with badminton matches being played.

Badminton in sports hall SFX

Badminton being played in a sports hall.

On the acoustic performance of a precast panel system made from environmentally sustainable concrete : application in sports hall buildings

The use of green building materials and products promotes conservation of non-renewable resources and help reduce associated environmental impacts. This article reports the acoustical performance of a precast panel system made largely from concrete waste material. Two major applications for such panels that are being investigated currently include walls and claddings to industrial and commercial buildings and sound barriers for urban freeways. In this study, the application of the concrete panels for optimizing reverberation time (RT) in sports halls is tested using numerical simulations. As an innovative approach, additional layers are added to the precast panels to improve their appearance. The absorption coefficients of the concrete panel improved significantly with the architectural finish. The material can be tuned according to the required peak frequency. The architectural finish helped reduce the RT for frequencies above 500 Hz. Its application to different types of ceilings revealed that the RT of curved ceiling reduced up to 40% compared to flat and hybrid ceiling. A comparison of wall and ceiling modifications in small, medium and large sports halls showed that medium-sized halls have better acoustical performance compared with small and large halls with ceiling as well as wall treatment.