Analysis of competitive behavior in young and adult handball athletes

Abstract This study aims to analyze the competitive behavior of young and adult handball athletes. Evaluated 143 young athletes (16.1 ± 0.7 years) of both sexes, participants of the Youth School Games, and 69 athletes (24.0 ± 4.3 years), all male participants of the Pan American club championship in the year 2009. To assess the competitive behavior we used the Sport Orientation Questionnaire instrument with subscales: compete (TQ1), win (TQ2) and set goals (TQ3). For data analysis descriptive statistics and the Mann-Whitney test were used, considering 5% of significance. Both young and adult athletes reported greater importance to the TQ3 domain. Comparing the groups, only the TQ3 domain did not show statistically significant difference with higher values for adult athletes. Thus, we can conclude that school and performance athletes showed similar competitive behavior, that is, there is a high tendency in the perception of victory in the competitive process, regardless differences of age and practice time. However, in both groups it was observed a greater emphasis on setting goals, and the performance athletes reported greater importance to the TQ3 compared to the young ones - 8.0 and 9.0, respectively.