What is volition?
Volition refers to the mental capacity to act purposefully that enables individuals to pursue goals. It is the connection between motivation ("I want to do it") and action ("I'm doing it"), playing a role in goal-directed behaviour. (Kuhl, 2001)
There are two volitional components that are often differentiated:
- volitional skills (competencies): e.g. self-regulation, self-control
- volitional deficits: e.g. self-impediment, lack of activation, loss of focus
Background
Kuhl's (2001) Theory of volitional action control is often seen as the base of volitional behavior. It has four mental systems that are coordinated depending on one's emotional state and govern self-regulation:
- Intention memory (IM) - stabilizes goals
- Intuitive Behavior Control (IBC) - enables automatic, fluent actions
- Extension Memory (EM) - stores motivating self-representations
- Object Recognition System (ORS) - activates doubts & risk focus
These systems interact, and depending on the individual's affective state, it can enhance intuitive and experience-based systems, supporting action or disrupt self-access, potentially leading to volitional breakdown. However, it has not been found out yet how exactly these systems interact and to what degree they are trainable, making them a valubale tool for more understanding of athletes in sportpsychology, but also one that still needs to be refined.
Relevance and Application in Sport Psychology
Volition is a central construct in applied sport psychology, particularly in the context of talent identification and development. Athletes in high-performance pathways must constantly adapt to setbacks, physical strain, and psychological pressure. In this environment, volitional competence is a key determinant of long-term development and performance sustainability.
Athletes with well-developed volitional skills are more likely to:
Persist through demanding and repetitive training phases
Maintain attentional focus under stress and competitive pressure
Sustain intrinsic motivation, thereby reducing the risk of early dropout
Empirical Evidence:
Longitudinal studies by Elbe et al. (2003) and Beckmann et al. (2004) demonstrated that volitional components - such as initiative, coping with failure, and attentional regulation - differ significantly between athletes who remain in elite sport and those who drop out. Athletes with higher self-regulatory capacity showed greater adaptability and more stable development trajectories.
Practical Use Cases:
Individual Diagnostics: Identifying volitional strengths and deficits using instruments such as the VKS (Volitionale Komponenten im Sport) or VCQ-Sport
Targeted Interventions: Designing training plans focused on enhancing specific subcomponents (e.g., improving impulse control or increasing training initiative)
Talent Monitoring & Development: Using volitional profiles to detect early warning signs of disengagement or burnout and implement timely support strategies
Illustrative Example:
Consider an athlete who scores low on initiative during training but high on self-motivation during competition. This discrepancy may indicate a context-specific volitional imbalance. A targeted intervention might involve transferring successful motivational strategies from competition settings into training routines - e.g., by anchoring training goals in emotionally salient competition imagery or peer modeling.
Measuring Volition – the VCQ-Sport
The Volitional Components Questionnaire-Sport is a tool to assess the construct of volition in the sports context. This self-report consists of 60 items, which are rated on a 4-point Likert scale:
- 0 = not true for me at all
- 1 = less true for me
- 2 = mostly true for me
- 3 = exactly true for me
Furthermore, these items are grouped into 23 subscales which can be sorted into four main dimensions that are the following:
- Self-optimization (29 items) - represents volitional strengths such as goal-setting, confidence, and self-motivation
- Self-impediment (9 items) - Reflects inner barriers like negative self-talk or introjection
- Lack of activation (13 items) - Captures deficits in energy, procrastination, or avoidance
- Loss of focus (9 items) - Indicates attention problems and competition disengagement
Reliability, validity, and norms
Reliability is supported by acceptable internal consistencies (Cronbach’s alpha: Self-optimisation = .89; Lack of activation = .86) and test-retest reliabilities ranging from .49 to .75 over a six-week interval.
Validity is demonstrated through significant correlations with related constructs from the ACS-Sport and the general VCQ (e.g., r = .69 between general and sport-specific self-optimisation), supporting construct validity.
While norms are established for the German version, users must contact the authors for further details.
Example items
- “Nearly everything I do in sport, I do voluntarily.” (subscale: self-determination, dimension: self-optimization)
- “In order to motivate myself during training, I imagine what will happen during a competition if I do not train properly.” (subscale: failure-oriented self-motivation, dimension: self-impediment)
- “I try to avoid really strenuous or difficult training elements.” (subscale: avoiding effort (Training), dimension: lack of activation)
- “It frequently happens to me that during a competition I would rather be doing something else.” (subscale: impulse control (Competition), dimension: loss of focus)
Interpretation
To determine the subscale value, you need to calculate the mean. Summing the scores in one of the four main dimensions gets you an overview over the respective dimension.
- “Self-optimization” (max. 87 points) – the higher the score the better the volitional skills of an athlete
- “Self-impediment” (max. 27p) & “lack of activation” (max. 39p) & “loss of focus”(max. 27p) – the higher the score the bigger the volitional deficits → need for optimization
Additional information:
- Norm tables for elite athletes are available for percentile-based benchmarking
- Some items require reverse coding