Self-efficacy and motivation in archers: Wibowo 2024

This is an online questionnaire completed by 220 Indonesian archers aged 16 to 21 who were entered in the Pre-PON 2023 qualifiers, the selection for the 2024 national games. The questions covered four things: self-efficacy (belief in one's own ability), social support, achievement motivation and performance. Performance too was a self-rating on a 1 to 5 scale, split into discipline, intensity and ability; no competition score entered the analysis.

In a structural equation model (PLS), all three factors were linked to self-reported performance, with coefficients of 0.278 for self-efficacy (p < 0.001), 0.366 for social support (p < 0.001) and 0.304 for motivation (p = 0.001). Together they accounted for 73% of the variance in self-rated performance (adjusted R squared 0.730).

The questionnaire items were adapted from published scales, notably an athlete self-efficacy scale, and reviewed by academic experts in a discussion group. Data were collected in February through Google Forms. The text mentions 25 questions, but the tables list 34 items: eight each for self-efficacy, social support and motivation, and ten for performance. The SmartPLS 4.0 analysis first checks that each item measures its own factor (loadings from 0.720 to 0.910, composite reliability from 0.918 to 0.953) and then estimates the paths between factors by bootstrapping.

The word effect, in the title and conclusions, should be read as association: this is a single snapshot, and cause cannot be inferred from it. Above all, every measure comes from the same questionnaire filled in by the same person, performance included. People who feel supported and motivated also tend to rate their own effort more highly, and part of the relationships may come from that; no actual score was used as a check.

There are also errors of arithmetic and description. There were 220 participants, yet 135 men and 115 women make 250; in the analysis section the independent variables become five and the dependent ones two; the SRMR is 0.071 in the table and 0.064 in the text; and the NFI of 0.679 falls below the 0.9 threshold the authors themselves cite. Beyond their entry in the Pre-PON qualifiers, nothing else is known about the athletes: bow type, years of experience and competition scores are all missing.

The study says nothing about how to score more points. It shows that among young Indonesian archers competing for national selection, those who report more confidence, support and motivation also report training with more discipline and intensity and feeling more capable. That association is plausible and has been seen in other sports, but here it measures how athletes describe themselves, not what happens on the shooting line.

For a coach, the most interesting figure, taken with caution, is the weight of social support, the highest of the three: family, team-mates and surroundings count at least as much as personal motivation in how these young archers see themselves.