"The Purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the perceived motivational climate, sportspersonship, moral functioning and team norms in a sample of youth basketball players. It was interest to examine gender differences on moral functioning and to determine the relationship between perceived motivational climate and moral atmosphere of team. Male(n=70) and female(n=41) high school basketball players participated in this study. Athletes completed the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire, four sport specific moral dilemmas, Multidimensional Sportsmanship Orientation Scale. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that players who perceived the motivational climate as predominantly mastery oriented reported more mature levels of social-moral reasoning and better sportspersonship behaviors. These players were also less apt to report amoral behaviour and perceived team norms as strongly disapproving of pro-aggressiveness. In contrast, amoral behaviors in basketball and were less likely to express sportspersonship behavior. The conclusions is that the finding illustrate the importance of studying motivational conditions in order to provide an understanding of social-moral functioning, sportspersonship and social-moral team norms in youth basketball.
Key words : perceived motivational climate, sportspersonship, team norm, mastery climate, competition climate"