John K. Gotwals * and Nancy Spencer-Cavaliere **
(*) School of Kinesiology, Lakehead University, Canada
(**) Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta, Canada
Citation
K. Gotwals, J., Spencer-Cavaliere, N. (2014). Intercollegiate perfectionistic athletes’ perspectives on achievement: Contributions to the understanding and assessment of perfectionism in sport. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 45(4), 271-297. doi:10.7352/IJSP.2014.45.271
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore perfectionistic athletes’ perspectives on achievement in sport. Male and female intercollegiate athletes whose Sport Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale 2 (Sport-MPS-2; Gotwals & Dunn, 2009) subscale profile reflected healthy perfectionism (n = 7) or unhealthy perfectionism (n = 11) were purposefully sampled and interviewed. Content analysis of the interview data revealed three themes: personal expectations, coping with challenge, and role of others. Although these themes were common to both healthy and unhealthy perfectionists, the content generally represented a dichotomy of positive and negative interpretations, respectively. Discussion explores the degree to which these findings provide insight into perfectionism among athletes, support use of the tripartite model (Stoeber & Otto, 2006) and anecdotal accounts of perfectionism (e.g., Burns, 1980; Hamachek, 1978) within sport, foster resolution of the healthy–unhealthy perfectionism debate, contribute to the development of the Sport-MPS-2, and advance understanding of the domain-specificity of perfectionism.
Keywords: Athletes, Healthy, Domain-specific, Mixed-methods, Perfectionism, Qualitative, Tripartite model, Unhealthy