Participating in sport activities helps adolescents develop compassion and leadership skills, especially for at risk inner city young adults. An effective coach education program contributes to a quality coach development; additionally, it influences the enjoyment and quality of sport participation for other younger children. The purpose of the study was to evaluate a coach program through measuring the perceptions of transitional coaches towards their experience in the preparation program.
Method
A qualitative research method was utilized in current study, and proposal was approved by a college institutional review board (IRB) before data collection. The researcher chose participants who were in a basketball unit of the City Coach Program (CCP). The CCP was a six weeks program providing important coaching skills and practical experience. Training coaches practiced their coaching skills with second to fifth graders. The researcher conducted four field observations and eight semi-structure interviews of coaches. Several informal interviews with program organizers and coaches were also conducted. All participants signed an informed consent form before interviewing. Participants (N=4) were Hispanic boys aged 14-17 years old, and all qualified for free lunch in schools located in an inner city in the northeast area of United States.
Analysis/Results
The interview data were verbatim transcribed, triangulated with field notes, and member checked with interviewed coaches and program organizers to assure the accuracy of the transcriptions. A constant comparative method was used to analyze observation and interview data. First stage of data analysis was unitizing. Each sentence or paragraph was treated as raw data. The second stage was categorizing. The researcher categorized pieces of raw data to similar meaning piles. Last stage was filling in patterns among meaningful piles. As a result, two higher order themes, five second order themes, and nine first order themes were found. Two main themes included coaches' perceptions of (a) their achievements in the program containing three domains of psychomotor, social/affective, and cognitive behaviors; and (b) the strategies they learned through the development program were managerial strategies and instructional strategies.
Conclusions
The inner city adolescent coaches perceived that the CCP program provided a safe place, a more positive learning environment, and a pleasant place to learn sport skills and increase physical activity for both adolescents and elementary children. Future researchers could conduct a longitudinal research to investigate the long-term achievements of those adolescents related to their school performance and their relationship with their family and communities.
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