An investigation into group cohesion and motive to achieve success levels of hockey national team athletes

The main premise of this research was to investigate the group cohesion levels and motive to achieve success levels of hockey national team athletes in terms of such variables as gender, age, age to start sports, training background, club league, league experience and national sports experience variables. I recruited a total of 73 athletes (nfemale:19, nmale: 54) with a mean age of 21.21±5.73 years in this present study. I collected the data through a personal information form, "the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ)", developed by Carron, Widmeyer, and Brawley (1985) and adapted into Turkish by Öcel and Aydın (2006), as well as three dimensional "SportsSpecific Achievement Motivation Scale (SSAMS)", developed by Willis (1982) and adapted into Turkish by Tiryaki and Gödelek (1997). In this present study, I used descriptive statistics, t-test in independent groups, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and LSD post hoc analysis were used to determine the source of the difference between the groups. Based on the results of the analysis, there is a statistically significant difference between the age variable and group cohesion levels of the athletes (p<0,05), whereas there is no statistically significant difference between the variables of gender, age to start sports, training background, club league, league experience and national sports experience (p>0,05). Further evidence suggest that there is a statistically significant difference between the variables of gender and national sports experience and the variables of gender and national sports experience and between the variables of age to start sports and training background and between the variables of motive to achieve success and training background (p<0,05). I conclude that female athletes have a higher level of motive to avoid failure than male athletes, and athletes between the ages of 17-20 have a high level of group cohesion. In addition, athletes who started sports at an early age have higher levels of motive to achieve success and power motive; athletes with a long training background have higher levels of motive to achieve success and power motive; and athletes with less national sport experience have higher levels of motive to avoid failure. Keywords: Group cohesion, motive to achieve, hockey, national athlete