Hope for success as a mediator between Big Five personality traits and achievement goal orientation among high performance and recreational athletes.

The main objective of this study was to determine whether hope for success mediates the relationship between personality and goal orientation in high performance and recreational athletes. The cross-sectional study included 289 high performance and recreational athletes of various sports (age: M = 20.34, SD = 1.86). To examine personality, we used the Big Five IPIP-BFM-20 questionnaire. To assess hope for success, we used the Hope for Success Questionnaire. The Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) was employed to examine goal orientation. Hope for success significantly mediates the relationships between conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional stability, intellect, and task goal orientation in sport. Higher levels of these personality traits are related to athletes' higher hope for success, which, in turn, is positively related to their task orientation. Personality traits may underpin the hope for success that develops from childhood. This, in turn, appears to be an important component on which, combined with the positive interaction and support from coaches, a task goal orientation beneficial to sport can be shaped in athletes.

Validation and personality conditionings of the 3 × 2 achievement goal model in sport.

Achievement goal models have been successfully applied in sport. In recent years, a framework that has emerged in this area is the 3 × 2 approach, being a natural evolution of years of research into the issue of achievement goals. Nevertheless, it is essential to further validate the abovementioned approach and explore its psychosocial context. Hence, the purpose of this study was to validate the latest 3 × 2 achievement goal model among high-performance and recreational athletes using the Polish version of the 3 × 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire for Sport (3 × 2 AGQ-S), and to determine the relationship between personality traits and achievement goals of athletes. The study included 413 athletes, with M = 20.62 and SD = 2.72. The 3 × 2 AGQ-S was used to assess achievement goals, the Big Five personality traits were assessed using the IPIP-BFM-20 questionnaire. The model of the Polish version of the 3 × 2 AGQ-S achieved a satisfactory fit to the data (CFI = 0.940, TLI = 0.923, RMSEA = 0.086, SRMR = 0.061). Cronbach's alphas for the subscales were: 0.77-0.96. High-performance athletes obtained higher achievement goals in task and self subscales than recreational athletes. Personality traits explained no more than 3% of variance of achievement goals in sport. Research involving the Polish version of the 3 × 2 AGQ-S supports the validity of the 3 × 2 model in sport among high-performance and recreational athletes. Nevertheless, the small relationships between the personality traits and achievement goals prompt searching for other psychosocial determinants of goals in sport.