Problems With Goal-Setting Research in Sports—and Their Solution

The efficacy of goal setting in improving task performance is one of the established findings in management and psychology. The effectiveness of goal setting has been verified by narrative reviews and meta-analyses; further, the generality of goal setting has been established across tasks, subjects, performance measures, time spans, countries, settings (laboratory and field), levels of analysis (individual, group, and organizational), and methods of setting goals (self-set, assigned, and participative). The research to date, based on over 500 studies, is summarized and integrated in Locke and Latham's (1990) recent book. In view of this, it is anomalous that several studies on goal setting in sport and exercise psychology have obtained null results, despite the expectation that goal setting should work in these realms just as well as, if not better than, in other realms (Locke Locke et al., 1968). When one or more of these precautions are not taken, do-best subjects, especially in laboratory settings, typically do set goals.