Individual and Situational Interest: The Role of Gender and Skill

The purpose of this study was to examine individual and situational interests in learning motor skills as associated with gender and skill. Individual and situational interests and motor skill were measured in middle school girls (n = 109) and boys (n = 82). A correlation analysis for the entire sample showed a moderate correlation between skill and individual interest (r = .63) and weak relationships between individual and situational interest (r < .10) and between situational interest and skill (r < .18). A MANOVA analysis revealed a difference between the boys and girls in situational interest at a borderline significance level (p = .05). However, when individual interest, skill, and gender were compared between students with high or low situational interest in a hierarchical log linear model, it was found that both groups did not differ in number of boys and girls (p = .98). But the high situational interest group had more students with high skill (p = .001) and high individual interest (p = .02). The results suggest that discrepancies in acquired skill accounted for the gender difference and that acquired skill is associated with individual interest and high situational interest in learning motor skills.