Abstract
Although there has been growing interest in the positive development of youth participating in organized sport (Holt, 2016), less attention has been devoted to the impact of university sport on positive development. As in youth sport, coaches continue to play an important role in the development of university level athletes. Following the development of the University Sport Experience Survey (USES; Rathwell & Young, 2016), this study aimed to predict USES subscales from coach-athlete relationships (CART-Q; Jowett & Ntoumanis, 2004) and player demographics (age, sex, year of eligibility, starter/non-starter). A sample of 126 male (46%) and female (54%) university aged athletes (M = 20.3 years, SD = 1.7) from multiple team sports participated in the study. Stepwise multiple regression analyses were used to identify significant predictors for each subscale of the USES. Results show that eight of the nine subscales were predicted by at least one independent variable. For positive subscales of the USES, commitment was the strongest predictor, followed by year of eligibility. The total amount of variance explained in across the positive subscales ranged between 10.9% and 22.3%. For negatives subscales, complementarity was the lone predictor of three subscales while sex predicted the other. Variance accounted for in these models ranged between 3.7% and 17.4%. Results suggest that coaches who wish to promote positive experiences in university athletes should focus on commitment and complementarity.
