READING GUIDE TO: Li, W., Lee, A.and Solmon, M. (2006)
Gender Differences in Beliefs About
the Influence of Ability and Effort in Sport and Physical Activity, in Sex Roles, 54(1/2):
147—156
This study looks at
gender differences in beliefs
about the relations between natural ability, skill and effort in
various
physical activities (16 in all).153
college students were given two questionnaires.The
results were quite complex.For example
men rated natural ability as influential
in success in
physical activity, but they varied in their ratings if the activities
were
gender linked.Overall, all the students
agreed that natural ability had more of a role in elite sport and
recreational
sport.Coaching implications follow.[This study is a real puzzle for those not
familiar with the psychological literature.I
also gave up on some of the more complex
statistics.One problem is that it is
difficult to work
out that the word ability is used in two different senses, for example.I still don’t know if I have it right].
Beliefs are important
in motivation, and in sport
it is beliefs about the relations between ability effort and
performance that
count.Ability can also be split into
two types—individual and genetic on the one hand, or influenced by
experience
and training on the other.These sorts
of beliefs are important for coaches to understand.
In psychology,
motivation is usually studied either
in terms of attribution theory or achievement goal theory.Studies show that athletes attribute their
success to a number of factors including luck, but the most important
ones concern
ability and effort: the same seems to apply to academic work.Some of these factors are seen as stable:
ability might be, and this would lead to pessimistic conclusions about
the
possibility of altering it.
In general, we need to
study dispositions rather than factors
operating with concrete achievement contexts, which is what attribution
theory
tends to study, including conceptions of
ability and goal orientations.[Yes --
what a dull way to study dispositions though!] Beliefs
about ability seem to operate in two dimensions, ‘entity’ and
‘incremental’ (in
the latter, ability is affected by effort, and this leads to positive
motivational patterns; the former is the opposite).There seem to be
two major types of goals too—performance and learning goals.Performance goals are norm-referenced,
comparing the athlete to others in the competition, and new tasks are
seen as a
way to increase competence.Performance
goals lead to a lack of motivation if perceived levels of ability are
low.Learning goals are more positive,
because
athletes see it is possible to increase their personal competence. In actual competition, those with a
performance orientation become ego oriented, and ‘believe that high
effort
means low ability’ (148), while learning oriented athletes think that
effort
increases their abilities.This is also
connected to an ego oriented state for performers, where success is
related to
ability alone, and a task oriented stance for learners, where success
is
related to effort.[Presumably these
links and connections depend on massive efforts to correlate various
scales
together].
When discussing gender
differences, it is suggested
that men are more likely to go for stable attributions, while women
tend to
stress effort.This seems to be related
to expectations.In activities ‘labelled
as male dominated’ men have higher levels of expectations of success,
and are
likely to see ability as the most important factor (149).When women are asked to do ‘gender atypical
tasks’, they suffer from low confidence and develop low expectations.There are certain task specific beliefs too
[there are lots of studies are cited in this section in support].It seems that beliefs are the important thing,
as well as expectations.Gender
differences arise from socialization not from biology [although there
is a weird aside about puberty].Despite
increased participation, there is
still some gender typing in sport which has limited the participation
of women,
and also deepened gendered expectations.
The various weightings
of ability and effort in
athletes’ beliefs can vary.For example,
one experiment offered athletes negative feedback and studied their
reaction:
those who held an incremental belief in ability tended to increase
their
effort.However, those holding entity
beliefs and those holding incremental beliefs both raised their beliefs
in the
effects of ability overall.The
researchers confess they are puzzled by these results, unless it means
that
when encountering failure, everyone tends to resort to a belief in
ability
rather than effort.Work in academic
settings also shows some interesting gender differences.Intelligent women tend to rate ability over
effort.Other studies show there are
little differences in sport—if anything men are more likely to go for
effort
rather than ability.These puzzling
findings might be explained by an argument that women have learned to
be
helpless (150).[We start to see here
some fascinating special pleading to weave a way round inconvenient
results.We find the same thing
happening with their own results lower down.The
ultimate rationalisation seems to be to insist
that it all means
that more research is necessary, as you would expect].
Other factors might
also influence the beliefs in
the relation between ability and effort.Coaches
certainly need to investigate these beliefs
in order to
encourage effort and engagement.Certainly,
the settings of activities and skills
might have varied impacts.
This particular project
set out to investigate
these relationships, and to test the hypothesis that, in general, men
tend to
believe in the importance of ability more than do women.However the team expect that this will vary
according to gender related tasks.They
are also interested in beliefs in general about performance, whether
people see
effort as important, and whether people tend to hold an entity view of
ability
rather than an incremental one.[Rather
a muddled piece then!A cynic might
suggest that the last two interests only arose because of the failure
of the
hypothesis in the first place].
Thus 153 students were
questioned, 78 were male, 28
were African-American.Ages ranged from
18 to 30.All were enrolled on physical
activity courses.Two main instruments
were used:
A questionnaire by Dweck examined
people’s
beliefs about natural ability as compared to effort or practice.Basically, students were asked to estimate
the percentage of each factor as a contribution to final performance in
16
different physical activities.They were
asked to do this separately for elite sport and recreational sport.
A pre-validated questionnaire, the
Conceptions
of Natural Athletic Ability Questionnaire which investigates the
different
conceptions of ability. The questions
were rephrased to relate to individuals.
The questionnaire seems to consist of 12 items which produces four
initial factors (learning, improvement, stable and gift) and two higher
order
factors (our old friends incremental and entity conceptions of
ability)
(150-51).
Apparently, these higher order factors are measured on various
subscales—the
learning scale (whether learning and training are important), and an
improvement scale (whether people believe they have to work hard to get
better). These both relate to the
incremental conception of ability. The entity
notion is measured by a stability subscale (whether the level of
ability cannot
be changed), and a gift scale (whether ability is the result of a
gift).
In each case, respondents were asked to agree
or disagree with a statement on a 5 point Likert scale. The
consistency of these scales was tested using
the legendary Cronbach coefficient alpha (and the result was high
consistency). Aggregate scores on all
the measures were obtained by adding all the responses and dividing by
the
number of items.
These instruments were
administered face to face,
with lots of examples and helpful instructions, and in the sequence
questionnaire one followed by questionnaire two [important as we shall
see
below].The team performed an ANOVA
between gender and participation to see if gender affected beliefs
about
ability and effort.Participation was
seen as the treatment affect.The
dependent variable was the percentage score attributed to natural
ability [from
questionnaire one].Generally, there
were significant affects between gender and participation levels and
the type
of activity, although less than 5% of the variance was explained by
these
factors overall.There is a general
tendency to rate effort/ practice rather than ability as important
except in a
few cases involving elite football and baseball, and male dominated
sports such
as football and baseball in general.Beliefs
about the influence of ability depended
according to the type of
activity in question – male dominance tended to be seen as more
influenced by ability.In general, males
attributed more to ability
than females.
Beliefs about male
dominated sports were tested
separately.Males tended to attribute
ability to successful performance here. Female dominated sports
displayed no
differences between men and women according to whether they rated
ability or effort/practice.It is possible
that men were using their
experience, and rating sports with which they were familiar.[So the implication is that if women are not
familiar with sports they tend to produce an indecisive attribution—a
kind of
don’t no answer].
The team also tested
results across the 16 activities
using correlations [why?Were the
results from the ANOVA unsatisfactory?] There is a negative relation
between
ability and incremental conceptions, [presumably showing that the
scales are
valid]. [I don’t really understand this—a negative relation between entity
notions of ability and incremental ones?Here,
and possibly elsewhere, the term ‘ability’ is
used as if it just
means entity notions?].There seem to be
no significant correlations between those holding different conceptions
of
ability and the beliefs they then have about the importance of ability
and
effort [more scale testing?].The team
then develop a profile analysis [a new one on me] (153) to see if there
are
gender differences between those holding entity and incremental notions
of
ability, and apparently there were significant gender effects, so that
‘conceptions
of ability varied as a function of gender’.There
were no gender differences in terms of a
belief in incremental
views of ability [pretty puzzling result then?Gender
works with one of these conceptions but not
the other, even
though they are being treated as opposites]. Overall, though, all the
respondents showed a stronger preference for incremental views of
ability
rather than entity views [not surprising given that the students have
had the idea
rammed down their throats on their courses?].
Overall then, ‘the data
did not provide strong
evidence to support’ the specific hypothesis that men are more likely
than
women to believe that success arises from natural ability (153).However, there was ‘some evidence’ for the
relation between gender and different beliefs [the dodgy stuff in the
paragraph
above?] Men tended to rate natural ability as more influential,
although this
did vary according to how gender-typical the sports were.With gender-typical activities there did tend
to be a greater belief in competence and a higher expectation of
success [for
both genders?].Males did see ability as
more important in their specific activities, but women did not: here it
might
be a matter of a generally lowered perception of competence among women
even in
female typical activities (153).This in
turn could arise from limited experience and opportunities for women
which will
in turn limit their beliefs in competence.
These beliefs might be
seen as developing, some
research suggests.Children change their
conceptions of ability, for example, and gradually come to
differentiate the
types.They also come to see more
importance in effort, and in task mastery.This
sort of work needs to be applied to attribution
theory, which is
not developmental [so they really should have tested athletes at
different ages
here?They say this should be done in
future research].
To reiterate the main
findings, males tend to have
slightly stronger beliefs in the notion of innate ability, although
this varies
according to whether they are rating gender linked activities.[I don’t think they have established that
these differences are statistically significant though?After having performed these clever analyses,
it seems you can still deny the results!] All the participants did see
an
important role for effort.They did tend
to rate ability as more important for elite activities, but overall
they rated effort
as more important, except in the four cases above.
How much does
participation affect this view [and
how much does being a student on a physical activity schools affect
it?]. If
there is an effect, this is support for the policy of sport for all,
especially
for women.Beliefs about effort and
ability do not seem to be related to whether or not you hold a
particular
conception of ability [entity vs.increment].Males
are slightly more likely to go for an entity
conception.The genders are similar in
terms of their
preference for incremental conceptions.This
could be a result of administering the
questionnaires in the
particular way that they did [wrong result, so special pleading is
needed?].It is possible that taking
questionnaire one first
affected the answers on questionnaire two [a rehearsal effect?].[Despite their own research!] the team
suspect that there are real differences between the genders after all
(155).
Implications for
motivating athletes remain.Coaches should
emphasise effort and practice
[they would be out of the job if ability really were innate!].They should challenge gender stereotyping in
sports.They should do more research on
the beliefs of athletes as a key variable affecting their motivation.