Capturing the motivational tone of coaches' interactive behaviour

Abstract

The importance of coaches' interactive behaviour with respect to athlete development has long been recognized (Horn, 2008). While a number of observational coding systems exist to record the instructional content of coaches' interactive behaviour, none are designed to explicitly capture the motivational tone of these interactions – 'how' coaches say what they say (Cushion, 2010). The current project entailed the development of a new behavioural coding system designed to focus on the motivational qualities of youth sport coaches' interactive behaviour within a combined self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and achievement goal theory (Roberts, 2012) framework. Behaviour categories were developed through an iterative combination of literature review and observation of recorded youth sport coaching sessions. A coder training protocol was developed and refined until coders consistently met a minimum standard of 75% agreement with respect to both inter- and intra-rater reliability. The full coding system was then validated across six different team and individual youth sports over a one year period. The validation and reliability procedures were then repeated for a modified version of the coding system. The new coding instrument, comprised of a behaviour content dimension and two motivational tone dimensions, appears to be the first valid and reliable tool for systematically capturing the motivational tone of observed coach interactive behaviour.

Acknowledgments: This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.