Abstract
The importance of coaching leadership is well established within the sport psychology literature (e.g., Gould et al., 2002). Avolio (1999) advocates leaders adopt a full range of leadership behaviours consisting of both transactional and transformational behaviours. With the exception of a small number of studies, most sport research to date has focused on the transactional component of leadership (Gomes et al., 2006). This may be due to the paucity of a sport specific transformational leadership measurement tool. The Differentiated Transformational Leadership Inventory (DTLI; Hardy et al., 2010) has shown promise as a valid and reliable measure of transformational leadership in a military context and has been recently used in sport (Callow et al., 2009). In particular, the DTLI has been used to examine athlete leadership but has not been used with regards to coaching leadership. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to test the factorial validity of the DTLI in relation to coaching behaviours. The inventory was completed by 199 varsity athletes (67 males, 128 females: Mage = 20.40; SD = 1.91). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that modifications to the DTLI were necessary in order to achieve acceptable levels of fit (e.g., RMSEA below .08, CFI and TLI above .90). Results indicated a five factor structure of transformational leadership provided the best model fit. Specific issues related to assessing coaching leadership behaviours are discussed.Acknowledgments: SSHRC