The Characteristics of Coaches that Verbally or Physically Abuse Young Athletes

Abstract

Verbal or physical abuse from coaches has a negative impact on young athletes. To prevent abuse against young athletes, it is important to know the characteristics of abusive coaches. This study aimed to elucidate the characteristics of coaches who commit verbal or physical abuse in youth sports teams. A cross-sectional study was conducted with coaches of youth sport teams in Miyagi prefecture, Japan (n = 1,283), using a self-reported questionnaire (response rate was 24.0%). Multivariate logistic regression models were used for analyses. The prevalence of verbal and physical abuse towards young athletes was 64.7% (n = 830) and 6.2% (n = 79), respectively. Verbal abuse was significantly associated with lower educational attainment (odds ratio (OR): 1.32, 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 1.03-1.69), experiences of verbal abuse by own coaches (OR: 1.85, 95% CI: 1.37-2.50), acceptability for verbal or physical abuse (OR: 2.53, 95% CI: 1.82-3.52), and dissatisfaction with athletes' attitude (OR: 1.62, 95% CI: 1.26-2.07). Physical abuse was significantly associated with experiences of physical abuse by respondents' coaches (OR: 2.71, 95% CI: 1.50-4.92), acceptability for verbal or physical abuse (OR: 3.89, 95% CI: 2.39-6.33), and longer experience of coaching in years (OR: 2.45, 95% CI: 1.20-4.98). The results of this study show that coaches who commit verbal or physical abuse had typically experienced abuse from their former coaches, and adopted a similar style. Breaking the negative cycle of verbal and physical abuse is necessary to eliminate the abuse of young athletes.

Parents’ Own Experience of Verbal Abuse Is Associated with their Acceptance of Abuse towards Children from Youth Sports Coaches

“…These results were similar to those of a former report that showed that coaches who had experienced these forms of abuse by their former coaches subsequently tended to use such abuse. They also considered such abuse to be a way to improve the abilities of young athletes (Yabe et al 2018). Parents who had experienced abuse might adapt to it, lessen the negative connotations surrounding it, and approve of its usage.…”

“…Some researchers have reported on the existence of verbal or physical abuse against athletes from coaches (Kerr and Stirling 2012;Stafford et al 2013Stafford et al , 2015Swigonski et al 2014;Vertommen et al 2017;Yabe et al 2018Yabe et al , 2019Hagiwara et al 2019). One previous study showed that 14.8% of young athletes had experienced verbal abuse and 6.4% had been physically abused by coaches in the preceding year .…”

“…Although most of these studies have addressed athletes' perceptions of their experiences of abuse (Stafford et al 2013(Stafford et al , 2015Swigonski et al 2014;Vertommen et al 2017), only a few have examined the perceptions of coaches (Yabe et al 2018;Hagiwara et al 2019) or parents (Kerr and Stirling 2012). The previous reports of coaches' perceptions of abuse assessed the characteristics of coaches who inflicted abuse and showed that abusive coaches tended to have experienced such abuse from their former coaches, which suggests that young athletes who experience such abuse could become abusive coaches in the future (Yabe et al 2018;Hagiwara et al 2019). Further, parents also have an influence on young athletes (Ommundsen et al 2006) and shape the sports environment for them positively or negatively (Chan et al 2012).…”

Verbal Abuse from Coaches Is Associated with Loss of Motivation for the Present Sport in Young Athletes: A Cross-Sectional Study in Miyagi Prefecture

“…We used the questionnaire directly in young athletes; the incidence of verbal and physical abuse from coaches in the past year was 14.8% and 6.4%, respectively. Verbal abuse has been considered a coaching tool (Swigonski et al 2014) and used with dissatisfaction of the attitude of young athletes (Yabe et al 2018). Although the rate of physical abuse was lower than that of verbal abuse, young athletes reported having experienced physical abuse perpetrated by coaches in this study.…”

“…Verbal and physical abuse are supposed to be used to punish inadequate performance or training behavior for improved performance and winning (Stirling and Kerr 2008), which is considered typical of a performance-based environment. Coaches consider that verbal or physical abuse is necessary to improve the ability of young athletes (Yabe et al 2018). However, coaches tend to be unaware of the negative impacts of their behaviors on young athletes (Carlsson and Lundqvist 2016).…”