Goal setting and motivation in archers: Fachrezi 2023

Twenty-one archers from the city of Pontianak in Indonesia, registered as city athletes, completed two questionnaires in late January 2023: one on goal setting and one on achievement motivation. The correlation between the two scores is r = 0.996, which the authors call perfect, and the text concludes that goal setting explains 99.20% of motivation.

On the authors' categories, 18 of the 21 archers (85.71%) had high goal setting, 2 medium and 1 low; for motivation, 20 were in the high band (95.24%) and 1 in the medium band. The descriptive table gives 70 (standard deviation 14) and 55 (standard deviation 11), presented as the archers' means, but these values coincide with the centre of the bands used for the categories (70 ± 14 and 55 ± 11). The sample was 11 males and 10 females.

The study measured no shooting scores and no competition results: both variables are answers to a questionnaire.

The design is correlational, with a single measurement in time. The authors took all 21 archers registered in the city rather than drawing a sample. The questionnaires were built for the study, with four response levels (from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree") and items worded both for and against. The goal setting scale covers six aspects: specific, relevant and challenging goals, commitment, participation in setting them and feedback. The motivation scale covers responsibility, choice of risk, creativity, attention to feedback and time spent on tasks. The number of items is not given.

Validity was judged by a psychologist; internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha) is 0.903 and 0.892. The questionnaires were handed out from 26 to 28 January 2023, partly through an online form and partly in person. Before the Pearson correlation the authors checked normality (p = 0.200 for both scales) and linearity (p = 0.850). Age, discipline, years of shooting and competition level are not reported.

The paper's figures do not hold together. If 70 really were the archers' mean, there could not be 18 archers out of 21 above 84: the sum for those 18 alone would already exceed the total the mean allows. The same goes for motivation, with a mean of 55 and 20 archers out of 21 above 66. The likeliest explanation is that 70 and 55 are the theoretical midpoints of the two scales, used to draw the bands (they would fit scales of 28 and 22 items answered from 1 to 4), and that the group's actual means are never reported. The text says females made up 58% and males 42%, while the table gives 11 males and 10 females (52% and 48%); one sentence on motivation refers to university students rather than archers.

The correlation is also higher than two questionnaires with that reliability can produce: with alphas of 0.903 and 0.892 the most one could expect is around 0.90. A value of 0.996 suggests either that the two scales measure the same thing or that there is an error in the data. In any case it is a correlation in 21 people at one point in time, and it says nothing about which comes first. The title and conclusions speak of influence, but the design does not allow it. The journal is a regional one.

For an archer there is nothing here to take to the range. The study measures no scores, and its figures contain errors that make them unusable. That clear goals help training is a topic with its own literature in sport, but this paper adds no evidence to it: it is a questionnaire given to one small city club, not a demonstration.