Sport Orientation Questionnaire

What it measures

Measures three achievement orientations in sport contexts. Competitiveness captures the general desire to strive for success in competitive sport situations — enjoying competition and wanting to excel. Win Orientation captures interpersonal comparison — defining success as beating opponents and performing better than others. Goal Orientation (also called Mastery Orientation) captures intrapersonal improvement — defining success as personal performance improvement and achieving self-set goals. Win and Goal orientations reflect the athlete's competitive achievement goal disposition, distinguishing those who define success externally (beating others) from those who define it internally (personal improvement). The SOQ is foundational to achievement goal theory research in sport and is widely used in research on coaching behaviour, athlete wellbeing, and competitive anxiety.

Response format

Likert (1–5, strongly disagree to strongly agree)

Representative items

• I am a competitive person. (Competitiveness)
• I want to be the best every time I compete. (Win)
• Winning is important to me. (Win)
• I work hard to improve my skills. (Goal)
• The best test of my ability is competing against others. (Win)

Usage notes & scoring

Three subscale scores. Competitiveness is the broadest dimension — athletes high in Competitiveness may be either Win-oriented or Goal-oriented. Win Orientation predicts competitive state anxiety and ego-involving motivational climate preference; Goal Orientation predicts intrinsic motivation, persistence, and task-involving climate preference. The SOQ has been validated across individual and team sports in multiple countries.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Gill, D.L., & Deeter, T.E. (1988). Development of the Sport Orientation Questionnaire. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 59(3), 191–202.

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