Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine adolescents’ sportspersonship orientations. To this end, 422 male and 488 female physical education students, aged 13 to 16 years old, of 1st. to 4th grade from middle schools of Valencian Community (Spain) were asked to complete a 25-item of a Spanish adaptation of the Multidimensional Sportspersonship Orientations Scale (MSOS), by Vallerand et al. (1997). The MSOS has five sub-scales: concern and respect for rules and officials, concern and respect for one’s opponent, concern and respect for social conventions in sport, concern and respect for one’s full commitment toward sport participation, and negative approach toward sport participation. The results indicated that middle school students have positive attitudes toward sportsmanship orientations. Additionally, we found that girls were more sportspersonship oriented than boys; students that no sports practice were more oriented to sportspersonship than boys that participated in sports competition; younger students were more sportspersonship oriented than the older; and students who had positive experiences in physical education classes were more sportspersonship oriented than the others.