An intervention program on motivation and psychological needs in physical education

Abstract

Motivation is a variable that influences the behavior of physical and sports activities promoting positive consequences such as pleasure, fun, and well-being. The objective of this study was to verify the effect of an intervention program on motivation and basic psychological needs (BPN) in School Physical Education. We investigated 42 students from a state public school, divided into two different groups (Control Group (CG) and Intervention Group (IG)). The CG was composed of 18 students and IG by 24 students. Students from both groups answered at the beginning and at the end of the intervention program two different questionnaires (BPNES, PLOCQ). After the initial application of the instruments, a weekly orientation intervention was carried out for 10 weeks only with the IG School Physical Education teacher, who sought to adapt the class in order to bring the students to the BPN (greater autonomy, competence, and social relation). After the intervention, there was a decrease in IG in three factors, with high effects sizes, indicating a high practical significance. The factors that underwent intervention in the IG were: introjected extrinsic motivation, external extrinsic motivation and amotivation. In the CG, no significant change in the variables was observed. We also explored the percentage of variation of the post-test for the pre-test among the variables measured, noting that only in the amotivation variable there was a statistically significant difference between the CG and IG groups after the intervention.