Body Appreciation, Gender, Motivation, and Competitive Success in Competition Climbing

Author

Marissa FrostFollow

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management

Committee Chair/Advisor

Ryan J. Gagnon

Committee Member

Barry Garst

Committee Member

Lauren Stephens

Abstract

The focus of this study was to examine the relation between the constructs of body appreciation, gender, motivation, and competitive success in competition climbers. To gather data for this study, a Qualtrics survey was created and distributed amongst the competition climbing community through USA Climbing’s Facebook page and member email list. Data was then collected from competition climbers between the ages of thirteen and sixty over 45 days in the winter of 2017. A total of 236 competition climbers participated in the survey and 202 of those responses were used in this study. Body appreciation in this study was analyzed through the utilization of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2). The Sports Motivation Scale (SMS-II) was used to determine the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation levels of the competition climbers. Competitive success was judged by the highest level of competition participated in for the three disciplines of climbing which are sport climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing. To establish the relation between each of these constructs, nine research questions were developed and analyzed using a correlation of all test variables and individual simple regressions for each research question. These analyses determined that four research questions had statistically significant results. A significant negative relation was found between extrinsic motivation and body appreciation scores (p = .032, β = -.165, SE = .046). There was a significant positive relation between intrinsic motivation and body appreciation scores (p = .002, β = .212, SE = .069). A significant positive relation between gender and extrinsic motivation was discovered (p = .020, β = .164, SE = .169). Finally, a significant positive relation between body appreciation and competitive success was found (p = .032, β = .203, SE = .113). With these results, recommendations were made on how coaches could improve their coaching techniques to address the topics discussed in this thesis.

Recommended Citation

Frost, Marissa, "Body Appreciation, Gender, Motivation, and Competitive Success in Competition Climbing" (2022). All Theses. 3809.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/3809