Student Perspectives Of Competition: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

The present study involved action research of appraising business students individual assessments of a classroom competition exercise in which they participated for a university semester. Analysis of in-depth interviews held with each student show four over-arching themes shared by the participants. First, students showed significant self-insight into how they perceive themselves competing. This occurred on both the cognitive and affective domains. Second, with relative consistency, students reported avoiding competitive situations where they did not believe chances were good that they would win. Conversely, they tended to involve themselves in situations where success was perceived as possible or likely. Third, gender differences existed in how the students viewed competition. And fourth, we found that classroom competition affected how the students related to one another on personal levels.