Abstract
It has been established recently that groupness and cohesion have independent and additive effects on athlete's intention to return to a hypothetical sport team (Spink et al., in press). Given that the study was conducted using vignettes and global measures of cohesion, the current study examined the effects of both task and social cohesion and groupness on intention to return of players from intact soccer teams. Young athletes (N=127) from 10 soccer teams completed measures of groupness (Spink et al., 2010), cohesion (Eys et al., 2009), and intention to return to the team in the following season (Spink, 1995) near the end of the season. Perceptions of groupness, and both task cohesion and social cohesion, were coded as higher or lower using a median-split. Four groupings were created: high cohesion/high groupness [HH], high cohesion/low groupness [HL], high groupness/low cohesion [LH], and low cohesion/low groupness [LL] perceptions for task and social cohesion, separately. ANOVA results differed for each cohesion measure. A significant condition main effect, p < .001, partial ?2 = .24 was found for task cohesion. Post-hoc results revealed independent effects for both task cohesion and groupness (HL > LL, LH > LL, ps < .03, .51 = Cohen's d = 1.25). While there was a significant condition main effect with social cohesion, p < .01, partial ?2 = .12, post-hoc results revealed only one independent effect for groupness (LH > LL, p < .01, Cohen's d = .75). Similarities and differences with Spink and colleagues (in press) are considered.
