Do multidimensional intrinsic and extrinsic motivation profiles discriminate between athlete scholarship status and gender?

The purpose of this investigation was to examine whether levels of multidimensional intrinsic, multidimensional extrinsic motivation and amotivation could accurately discriminate scholarship status and gender in United States collegiate athletes. Participants comprised 82 male (M age = 19.89, SD = 1.39) and 90 female (M age = 20.26, SD = 1.63) collegiate athletes. Each participant completed a demographic questionnaire and the Sports Motivation Scale (Pelletier, L.G., Fortier, M.S., Vallerand, R.J., Tuson, K. M., Brière, N.M., & Blais, M.R. (1995). Toward a new measure of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation in sports: The Sports Motivation Scale. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 17, 35-53). Two-group discriminant analysis revealed a significant canonical function correctly classifying 72.8% of the cases into either the scholarship or non-scholarship group. The least self-determined forms of extrinsic motivation were the strongest contributors to this discrimination. With respect to gender, a significant discriminant function existed, again with the least self-determined forms of extrinsic motivation representing the strongest discriminating variables. The results provide converging evidence that rewards such as scholarships can undermine intrinsic motivation. Further, as well as being consistent with theoretical predictions embedded in cognitive evaluation theory, the results of this study suggest that in addition to undermining intrinsic motivation, scholarships could foster non-self-determined forms of motivation.