Background/Purpose Based on research that shows more autonomy-supportive sports environments enhance athletes' performance in competition, the purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that coaches with more successful career game winning percentages use more autonomy support behaviors than coaches with less successful game winning percentages.
Method Six high school varsity boys' soccer coaches (mean years of coaching experience = 10.50 + 11.84) were selected for this study, based on their diverse career game winning percentages (14%-99%). The coaches were videotaped during 17 games across a regular season. Autonomy support behaviors were captured using systematic observation of the recorded games. Three researchers coded the games using the Instrument for Coaches' Autonomy-Support Analysis (I-CAAn) after establishing adequate inter-rater reliability (.81-.85).
Analysis/Results Six separate one-way ANOVAs indicated no significant differences between coaches with at least a .70 winning record (N=3) and coaches with less than a .70 winning record (N=3) on six behavior variables: offers choice, praises/encourages, gives rationale, solicits input, accepts/confirms input and prompts. In total, more successful coaches used 877 autonomy support behaviors and less successful coaches used 817.
Conclusions The results of this study indicate career wins is not a factor in autonomy supportive coaching during games within the coaches in this sample. These results seem to contradict previous research suggesting more autonomy support leads to better performance. As this is an initial study, further investigation is needed to explore coaches' autonomy support with different samples and within different contexts, such as during practices or in individual sports.
See more of: Research Consortium