Longitudinal Stability and Change in Young Students’ Mastery-Approach Goals for Running

Abstract

In the present study, we examined the longitudinal stability and change in mastery-approach goals for running as offered in regularly scheduled physical education (PE) and athletics classes in the United States. There were five waves of data collection from 806 students (431 boys; 375 girls) who were tracked from fourth to eighth grade while participating in running activities in PE or athletics classes. We assessed the participants’ mastery-approach goals using four items on a 5-point scale. We found acceptable longitudinal construct validity, measurement invariance, and scale reliability for the scores of mastery-approach goals, and we found these goals to have moderate stability across this 5-year period. Latent growth modeling revealed a linear decline in mean mastery-approach goal scores over the five school years. We concluded that the assessment of mastery-approach goals over time was both valid and reliable and that these running mastery-approach goals were stable in most respects but became less intense over time.