Comparing the objective motivational climate created by grassroots soccer coaches in England, Greece and France

Abstract

International audienceThe coach-created motivational climate is a key determinant of athletes' welfare and degree of optimal functioning when taking part in sport. The purpose of this study, grounded in a selfdetermination theory and achievement goal theory-integrated framework, was to investigate to what extent the differences in the objective motivational climate created by the coaches involved in the European-wide "Promoting Adolescent Physical Activity" project were a function of their country affiliation (i.e. England, Greece and France). Fifty-seven coaches (55 men and 2 women) from England, Greece and France were selected to take part in the study. Each coach was videotaped during one complete training session using a digital camcorder and microphone. The recently developed Multidimensional Motivational Climate Observation System was used to code the coach-created motivational climate in terms of need-supportive and need-thwarting environmental dimensions. Results showed that (1) coaches were observed to emphasise on a more need-supportive environment than a need-thwarting one (i.e. 69.9% and 30.1% of the whole behaviours coded, respectively) and (2) although coaches' interpersonal styles varied significantly across countries, the general pattern of the coach-created environment observed in the three countries had a similar profile

Effects of a training program to enhance autonomy supportive behaviors among youth soccer coaches

“…As indicated, levels of autonomy supportive and relatedness supportive behaviors were moderate for this sample. Controlling behaviors were considered low in potency, when compared to the theoretical mean of the scale (Tessier et al, 2013). Relatedness thwarting was very low for this sample, while structure was very high.…”

“…Information was also gathered regarding the extent to which coaches were empowering or disempowering towards their athletes. Similar to Tessier et al (2013), raters were given a list of strategies that were indicative of the aforementioned environmental dimensions. For all dimensions, coaches were rated on their use of specific behaviors on a 4-point scale, with 0 indicating the behavior was not present and 3 indicating a strong emphasis on the use of the specific behavior.…”

“…Pearson correlations were used to estimate inter-rater reliability among all observations throughout the study, which was found to be .86. Similar to procedures outlined in Tessier et al (2013), scores of both raters were averaged into one overall score per dimension.…”

“…The Multidimensional Motivational Climate Observation System (Tessier et al, 2013) was used to evaluate the coaches' use of varied environmental dimensions. With approval from the instrument developer, the system was modified for use in the present study by including the dimensions of autonomy support, controlling behaviors, relatedness supportive, relatedness thwarting, and structure.…”

“…In evaluating the use of autonomy supportive behaviors, Tessier and colleagues implemented a training program that spanned over 3 countries and included 57 soccer coaches (Tessier et al, 2013). Evaluations of coaches indicated a modest use of need-supportive behaviors (including autonomy and relatedness support).…”