Coach's Behavior And An Athlete's Scholarship Status example essay topic

The topic that I wanted to do research on was the effect of a coach's leadership style on an athlete's intrinsic motivation. I also wanted to find out how an athlete's scholarship status has an effect on their intrinsic motivation. I think this topic is important for the field of sport and physical activity to investigate because everyone in this field should be familiar with how a coach's leadership style and an athlete's scholarship status effects the outcome of an athlete's intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation to engage in an activity for its own sake. People who are intrinsically motivated work on tasks because they find them enjoyable. In the next couple of paragraphs I will comment on the research that I have found on how intrinsic motivation is effected by a coach's leadership style and an athlete's scholarship status (Kerr, 1997).

For the first research article that I found, the study examined whether the intrinsic motivation levels of first-year college athletes changed from pre- to post-season as a function of their scholarship status or their perceptions of their coaches' behavior. 72 division I athletes completed questionnaires assessing their intrinsic motivation at the beginning and end of their first year of participation. They also reported their scholarship status and their perceptions of their coaches' behavior over the season (Amorose and Horn 2001). Research conducted in the sport setting has found that coaches' leadership styles and behaviors influence athletes' psychological responses such as their self-esteem, perceptions of competence, affect, and motivation.

Behaviors exhibited by coaches can also influence athletes' level of intrinsic motivation. For instance, studies examining the role of verbal feedback on intrinsic motivation have found that positive feedback is associated with higher levels of intrinsic, whereas negative feedback is associated with lower levels of intrinsic motivation (Amorose and Horn, 2001). According to the cognitive evaluation theory, the use or non-use of external reward have a significant influence on individuals' level of intrinsic motivation. Receiving a reward can be perceived by an individual as an indication of competence (for example, receiving a scholarship to participate in collegiate sports). The researchers thought that athletes who were on a scholarship world report less intrinsic motivation than the non-scholarship athletes. They thought this because of the fact that the athletes were being paid for doing an activity that was already intrinsically pleasing (Amorose and Horn, 2001).

To conduct this experiment, the researchers used different questionnaires including the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI). The results of this experiment concluded that there were no differences between scholarship and non-scholarship athletes on the changes in intrinsic motivation. When looking at coaching behavior and intrinsic motivation there was a positive relationship between training-instruction and changes in the athletes' levels of intrinsic motivation and a negative relationship between autocratic behavior and changes in intrinsic motivation. In an autocratic leadership style where the coach makes all of the decisions regarding the team without asking the athlete's opinion would result in lower self-determination, which would ultimately lead to lower intrinsic motivation. The results here showed that a coach's behavior and an athlete's scholarship status have an effect of an athletes' intrinsic motivation. The second study I looked at was conducted to test whether college athletes' intrinsic motivation would vary as a function of several factors including athletes' gender, scholarship status, their perceptions concerning the number of people on their team who were on scholarships and their coaches' behavior.

This article is different from the first article because it is not looking at the pre- to post-season changes. It also looks at how the athletes' perceive the number of people on their team that is getting a scholarship. Male and female college athletes from a variety of Division I sports completed a series of paper-and-pencil questionnaires. To assess the athlete's perceptions of their coaches' behaviors, two questionnaires were selected. First, athletes were administered the Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS). The LSS consists of five subscales, two of which measure the coach's decision-making style, which consist of democratic and autocratic.

Two other subscales measured the coach's motivational tendencies, which were social support and positive feedback. And the other subscale measured the coach's instructional behavior, which consisted of training and instruction (Deci, 1985). The second questionnaire administered to assess athletes' perceptions of their coaches' behavior was the Coaching Feedback Questionnaire (CF). This questionnaire was developed to assess athletes' perceptions regarding the type of feedback their coaches give them in response to their performance successes and failures. For each of the items, athletes were asked to indicate on a 5-point scale (very typical to not typical).

This indicated how typical it was for their coach to give them feedback during a particular situation in practices and games. The Intrinsic Motivation Inventory that was use in the research above was also used in this study (Deci, 1985). The authors of this research concluded that athletes on full scholarships scored significantly higher on the perceived competence subscale of the IMI than did athletes who were not on scholarship. Scholarships do not appear to result in an undermining of athletes self-determination because this study showed that the three scholarship status groups (full, partial, and none) did not differ on perceived choice or perceived enjoyment. When looking at the relationship between athletes' intrinsic motivation, their scholarship status, and their perceptions of their coaches' behaviors, the researchers came up with these results.

Coaches who exhibit a leadership style characterized by low levels of autocratic behavior and who provide high frequencies of positive encouraging, and information ally based feedback and low frequencies of ignoring players's uc cesses and failures may create an environment that facilitates the development of intrinsic motivation in their athletes. The results of this study also revealed some gender differences. A democratic coaching style seems to be more important to female athletes' intrinsic motivation than it does in males (Deci, 1985). The next research article that I reviewed looked at the discrepancy between preferences and perceptions of leadership behavior and satisfaction of athletes in varying sports. The five perceived leadership behaviors assessed were training and instruction, democratic behavior, autocratic behavior, social support, and positive feedback.

There were four facets of satisfaction that was looked at and they were, satisfaction with individual performance, satisfaction with team performance, satisfaction with leadership, and satisfaction with overall involvement. The participants of this study were athletes from basketball, wrestling, and track and field teams from Canadian Universities. A set of questionnaires was sent to a contact person at each university who administered, collected and returned them to investigators. The researchers of this article found that the athletes's satisfaction with leadership increased as the coach's perceived emphasis on training and instruction increased. This finding supported the view that athletics is a task-oriented enterprise. Satisfaction with individual performance was unrelated to the discrepancy between preferred and perceived leadership behavior.

One explanation for the lack of association between leadership behavior and satisfaction with individual performance can be draw from research on task goals, performance and satisfaction (Chelladurai, 1984). In the case of positive feedback, a curvilinear relationship was obtained for satisfaction with leadership and satisfaction with overall involvement. When the athletes' perception of positive feedback and autocratic behavior on the part of the coach was equal to their preference, satisfaction was optimal. However, when the perceptions deviated in either direction from the preferences (too much or too little) satisfaction declined. This study was based on the premise that participation in athletics and satisfaction with such participation are of value in themselves without reference to any external measures of success and failure (Chelladurai, 1984). The information that I gathered throughout these articles looked how a college athletes' perception of their coaches' leadership style and scholarship status could effect their intrinsic motivation.

It was found that a coaches' leadership style or coaching style could increase or decrease an athlete's intrinsic motivation. It was said that scholarship status had hardly any effect on intrinsic motivation. The article stated that athletes would prefer a democratic style of coaching rather than an autocratic style. Intrinsic motivation was shown to increase when a coach had a democratic way of coaching. For my practical application I chose to survey Division I college athletes. My application was connected to this research because I also wanted to find out how coaching styles effected an athlete's motivation.

I choose to this application because I am really interested in motivation and learning how to motivate. So doing this application would give me an opportunity to see first hand how different athletes of different sports perceived their coaches and how they were intrinsically motivated. For my application I used the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. This inventory was handed out to the girls basketball team at George Mason University. I decided to use GMU because I knew that there would probably be a lot of surveys being handed out to the athletes here at VCU. I got the permission from the coach to hand out the survey at the end of one of the teams' practices.

After handing out the survey I explained to the athletes what I was doing. The team then filled out the survey and handed it back in to me. I then to each athlete's survey and scored it. I scored the survey by averaging all of the numbers for each subscale together. If a (R) was shown after a question reversed that score by subtracting eight.

After scoring the survey, I came up with these results. Most of the athletes felt good about the sport that they were involved in. They felt that they didn't perform well when their coaches gave negative feedback and they like it when their coach let them have input on some of the decision-making. I came up with these results by looking at the numbers that I came up with after calculating the survey. For example, a higher score on pressure / tension means the person felt more pressured and tense. A higher score on perceived competence means the person felt more competent.

I also found that scholarship status had more effect on these athletes then the articles that I reviewed. My results that I found by doing my application and the results that the researchers came up with were very similar. We both found that athletes' like the democratic way of coaching and their motivation increases with positive feedback. The only difference that I could see that we had was scholarship status. The researchers found no difference in scholarship, but I did. I could have been because I surveyed a sport where most of the players have scholarships.

I wasn't really that surprised with my findings. I didn't think that they would differ from the findings of the previous articles. I really liked doing this research. I was very interested in the topic that I chose and this made things a lot easier for me. I really had fun doing this and I learned a lot from performing the practical application. I have to say that that was very interesting to me.

From doing this research I know that Intrinsic Motivation differs depending on the person and the task of the sport. I have learned that athletes like to have input in decisions that deals with the team and that athletes love instruction. I don't think there are any questions that I could come up with because I think I was provided with good information.