The group had specific, achievable and realistic purpose. This doubled as their objective. The purpose of the study was two-fold; primary purpose and secondary purpose. The primary objective of the study was to determine the relationship which exists between group performance and group goal setting in an exercise setting. On the other hand, the secondary or the ancillary purpose was to determine if cohesion, physical activity, and self efficacy level influence the degree of group performance/ group goal relationship. In particular, the group was highly interested in establishing the effect of the degree of group goal on settings, tasks, and participants. In fact, the study generally focused on the individual goal setting on sport and physical activity.
How the study was conducted
The study was conducted using sampling technique. The samples basically were made up of a total six thousand three hundred and thirty six participants. The participants were further registered for a program of an eight walking weeks. In essence, data were got from twelve different which each had one sixty three groups with more than one thousand six hundred participants giving twenty six result sizes. The group had well defined moderator variables. These included the level of task cohesion available in groups, degree of physical activity of members of a group before the start of the study, and the group’s average level of self efficacy.
On the same note, the participants were eighteen years older were engaged in groups to register for a community’s physical promotion program, dubbed the Walk Kansas. Flyers, public service announcements and newspapers were used to advertise the program, basically with an aim set for six members for every group. In particular, the groups were self selected. There was however a variation in participant’s number in each group. All the same, there were 1325 groups.
All the participants had to fill a registration form. Besides other variables, details required included also the demographic information of very participant. On e of such demographic variable was ethnicity.
The group had well laid down measures. It in particular made use of participatory research while conducting its research. However, the number of variables under study was restricted. These were assessed as follows.
The level of physical activity
Queries developed by the Center for Disease control and prevention Behavioral Risk factor Surveillance were employed to monitor the previous physical activity level, in actual sense, participants’ physical stages before the start of the program of walking. Two questions were specifically used to evaluate moderate activity. The questions included whether the participants in a normal week do moderate activities for not less than ten minutes at ago such as bicycling, gardening, brisk walking, vacuuming or in any physical activity that may increase the rate of heartbeat or breathing intensity. Another question was to know how much time spent on the per day in total when moderate activities were done for a duration of ten minutes each. According to operational definition, participants were allocated to one of the created three categories which included active, meeting recommended procedures or insufficiently active. The survey indeed has shown reliability and validity in establishing if the respondents are active, that is, meeting recommendations, inactive or insufficiently active.
Self-efficacy
Self efficacy was monitored using four different items that were really rated on a confidence scale beginning from one-not all confident to five-completely confident. The items basically assessed participant’s confidence in their effort and ability schedule and plan physical activity in a consistent routine. The use of this measure and similar other measures of programming self-efficacy have really demonstrated some internal consistency.
Group cohesion
Cohesion was basically undertaken by employing the Group Integration-Task
Subscale of the Physical Activity Group Environment Questionnaire (PAGEQ). The task cohesion subscale had four items which assessed the perception of the participants with regard to the effect of walking on goals of physical activity.
The finding of the study
The study established that there was a positive relationship between group performance and goal setting. In fact, the study revealed a positive correlation between the two. The correlation value was found to be a Cohen's d effect size of .99. This was in consistence with the group’s hypothesis. It was realized that group goals were directly proportional to the distance covered by the walking group.
In addition, based on the analysis, it was noticed that cohesion wasn’t a moderator while self efficacy and physical activity level were the major strength of the connection between group performance and group goal setting. This was enhanced as the group mean for physical activity and self-efficacy increased. Not only this, further analyses established that self-efficacy and physical activity level interacted in a manner that was conjunctive in effect to the group performance relationship/the group goal. In this respect, groups with high self-efficacy and physical activity showed relatively a stronger relationship than those groups with combinations of the two.
Study limitations
The study limited itself to three moderator variables. The three moderators included, the intensity of physical activity of the group members before the study was started, the intensity of task cohesion present in the groups and lastly the groups mean intensity of self-efficacy. The research as well had the hypothesis. It hypothesized that the group-goal/group-performance was directly proportional to the moderator variables. The study was further limited cohesion, self-efficacy and prior exercise participation.
Implications of the findings
Another implication is in relation to the number of questions arising from the findings. For instance, suggestion has been made that that the relation between performance and goal setting is actually strongest when individuals are dedicated to their projected goals. In this regard, it appears plausible that an individual or collective engagement to group goals may serve as a moderator in group performance/group-goal relationship in an activity group.
The study was had impressive findings which fit correctly within the structure of the social cognitive school of thought which implies that behavioral capacity like skill level and self-efficacy stands for two of the most momentous variables affecting behaviors for example physical activity. This had an implication that self-efficacy is definitely the most powerful factor determining human behavior. The study also in this same line noted that among the strong correlates of physical activity conduct were the past history of physical exercise and self-efficacy. The finding therefore further implies that groups typified by individuals with high aggregate mean rates of physical activity and high aggregate mean of self-efficacy generate high goals and indeed subsequently show superior performance.
The note in the study that there was task cohesion did not harmonize the group-performance and group-goal relationships. The possible explanation for the finding was that the cohesion facilitates the relationship existing between group performance and group goal. This therefore implies that instead of influencing the weight or relationship’s nature, collective goal plan sometimes may result to intensified group cohesion which may, in turn, result into improved group performance.
My research would be based on establishing if there is positive correlation between physical exercise and health. A lot of scholarly debate and scientific research had been conducted to establish the relationship of physical activities or exercises with the health of individuals. There are some hypotheses that had been developed against some disease that lack of physical exercises may be chief contributing factor. Lack of exercise for instance had been argued to be among the causes of obesity and this would be a hypothesis that I would like to proof or disproof. It is hypothetical to me that as age increases, the propensity to engage in any meaningful physical exercise decreases. This is perhaps due to the increase in job commitment as people become more occupied in offices leaving little or no time to physical activities. It is also hypothetical that lack of exercise contributes to development of coronary complications which sometimes culminates to death on some individuals. I would also be interested in establishing the particular age bracket that requires more physical exercise.
Goal striving and the implementation of goal intentions in the regulation of body weight
It has been noticed that goal directed dieting behaviors for both men and women are highly influenced by the appraisals in a linear compensatory manner. Self-efficacy however proved to the most important. Social cognition models have also been one of the main areas of focus on the models of health to be implemented. Five different models have been the main areas of focus and they include: the health brief model, health focus of control model, protection motivation theory and the theory of planned behavior. The actions that accompany the models can be divided into two main categories aimed at explaining the relationship between the given models and how they affect a sports personality. The categories are goal setting and goal striving categories. Therefore each of the models can be classified as a goal striving model or as a goal setting model. More attention have however been given to the behavioral intentions whereby attitudes and subjective norms give adequate explanations to why a given action can be depicted by a sports personality.
Purpose of this study
The Purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between the easy to implement and the difficult to implement goal intentions in a field study of body weight maintenance. The study was conducted on 141 university students.
How the study was conducted
The study was conducted to identify the personal goals of about 190 participants who were university students. The students were asked to indicate whether their goals in the upcoming month were to lose weight, maintain their current weights or gain weight. This was mainly done so as to direct the participants to different questions which were in such a way as to check their intentions as far as their personal gains were concerned. It was also aimed at avoiding any form of confounding the patients whose personal goals were to gain weight. When the study was being conducted, the students were asked to complete a survey early in the school year and then they were later on contacted a month later in order to make a follow up. Anonymous code numbers were used to identify the participants and give a course of credit for cooperation of all the participants who were involved in the study. Measures of goal intention, self efficacy, outcome expectancy and the affect towards means were obtained on wave I. frequency of the performance on the other side and goal attainment were assessed on wave II.
Findings from the study
The study indicated that a total of about 150 students indicated that losing or maintaining their current weights was a personal goal for them over the coming next one month. However, there were six students who had a goal of gaining weight for the coming next one month. 34 students on the other hand did not have any particular goal of whether they wanted to lose weight or gain weight in the coming month. The study established that there was a relationship between the diet that the participants and their overall weight gain/loss during the study period. The study revealed a positive correlation between the two aspects. The overall goals for each of the groups were also directly proportional as different respondents depicted similar characteristics as far as weight loss/gain is concerned and the type of diet taken by the participants.
Implications of the findings
Comparison of the two sets of study
The two sets of studies were very instrumental to anyone who is involved in the study of sports. There are several features that accompany a sports personality. Most of these features can however be developed by an individual through a set of physical activities. In order to develop the features, a sports personality has to go through some given forms of physical exercises. The exercises can be done individually or as a group as the two sets of studies seek to find out.
The study on group goal setting and group performance in a physical context had some interesting findings. This study was mainly grounded in group dynamics theory, the findings also fit nicely within the framework of Bandura’s social cognitive theory which suggests that behavioral capability and self-efficacy represent two of the most important variables influencing behaviors such as physical activity. According to this theory, self-efficacy is the most powerful determinant of human behavior, and this aspect of the theory has been strongly supported in the literature. Therefore, the present results extend previous findings in demonstrating that, groups characterized by a membership with high average levels of physical activity and high average self-efficacy establish high goals and consequently exhibit superior performance. This study mainly focused on the influences of having sports personality train as a group and the effects of the trainings recorded as a group. This method showed some significant effects on the development of the sports personality but at the same time resulted into inaccurate results as some individuals may seek to hide behind the successes of others. Therefore I would propose that whenever a similar study is being conducted, individuals need to be placed separately so that they can be properly examined at individual levels. This can help greatly in reporting an accurate assessment of the participants involved in the study.
The Goal striving and implementation of goal intentions in the regulation of body weights on the other hand involved individual examination. The study was mainly aimed at giving an account of how each sports personality could gain weight from an individual point of view. The results obtained were not grouped and then results generalized but each individual had his/her own unique way of weight gain. The results obtained also showed how body weights could be gained, lost or maintained through the use of a specific type of diet. This form of individual study is one of the best since people are different and need to be studied differently as opposed to the first form of study whereby individual are jumbled together and then studied as a unit. It helps in formulating specific mechanisms that can be used to improve a given feature in a sports personality. This plays a very important role towards ensuring that each person is properly nurtured towards the participation in a particular event. Compared with the first form of study which involved individuals being studied as a group, this method is much better as it can be used to assist in the individual improvement of specific traits in sports. All these goal setting initiatives go hand in hand with the mindset of an individual. If a person is well determined towards achieving a particular goal, he/she can easily achieve it as compared to a person being forced by circumstances and is not properly convinced to strive towards the same.
BURKEO, S. M., SHAPcOTT, K. M. et al. Group Goal Setting and Group Performance In A Physical Activity Context. West Virginia University Board of Governors Publishers.
