The Relationship Between Goal Orientation and Self-Efficacy for Exercise

This study examined exercisers' motivational profiles and investigated whether different combinations of task and ego orientation would reflect different levels of coping and task self-efficacy. Male ( n = 106) and female ( n = 174) exercisers were administered an exercise version of the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda & Nicholls, 1992) and an instrument measuring coping and task self-efficacy. The results of a K-means cluster analysis on the questionnaire scores resulted in a 5-cluster solution that maximized between-group differences and minimized within-group differences. A MANOVA indicated that the different cluster groups could be distinguished by their coping and task self-efficacy. More specifically, exercisers with high levels of task orientation, regardless of their corresponding levels of ego orientation, were characterized by having higher levels of self-efficacy than exercisers with low levels of task orientation combined with low to high levels of ego orientation.