Measuring military university Students’ motivational goals in the domain of physical exercise

The aim of this study was to test whether the existing achievement goal orientation instrument could be modified to measure goal endorsement in recreational physical training. The participants were 139 second-year students at the Finnish National Defense University. The orientations were assessed using a modified questionnaire that included four orientations: mastery-intrinsic orientation (focus on learning new things and developing competence), mastery-extrinsic orientation (focus on learning and mastery but with extrinsic criteria such as grades), performance-approach orientation (focus on outperforming others) and performance-avoidance orientation (focus on avoiding judgments of incompetence). Based on the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, factor structures were compared. The comparison of psychometric results of different models supported the four-dimensional instrument. The participants mostly strived for personal development of fitness, as well as good results. They also emphasized social comparison to some extent but had very little concerns of failure or appearing inferior.