The Relation Between Participation Motives and Goal Orientation of Participants in Recreational Dance Activities

The aim of the study was to investigate: a) the participation motives of adults who take part in recreational dance activities, b) whether their demographic characteristics differentiate their participation motives and goal orientation and c) the relation between motivation and goal orientation. The study sample was 908 adult men and women, who participated in learning Greek dances. For the data collection, the method used was the Greek version (Patsiaouras, Keramida & Papanikolaou, 2004) of Participation Motivation Questionnaire (Gill, Gross & Huddleston, 1983) and the Greek version (Diggelidis & Papaioannou, 2002) of “Personal Orientation” questionnaire (TEOSQ: Task & Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire) (Duda & Whitehead, 1998). Considering the results of the research, the emerging conclusions are: a) the factors “fitness”, “abilities-skills” and “friendship” constitute the most important motives for participating in dance activities. b) gender, age, educational level and dancing experience become partly differentiating factors for participation motives c. among the recreational dance activities, Greek dances form a natural activity in which the participants are both internally and externally motivated. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n3p30