Abstract
Currently there has been little research in the field of teammate trust in sports. There have however, been numerous studies that have investigated the relationship of team trust in the workplace. These studies have found that team trust affects job satisfaction, cooperation, and team and individual performance. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of teammate trust on athlete satisfaction in sport. It was also to determine if there was a difference in this relationship between additive and interdependent sports. Fifty-one females (67.1%) and 24 males (31.6%) participated in the study. Average age of participants was 19.85 years (SD=1.52). Forty-five athletes competed in additive sports (59.2%) and 31 athletes competed in interdependent sports (40.8%). Data were collected through Opinio. The online questionnaire consisted of three measures: demographics, an adaptation of the Trust in Close Relationships Scale and a portion of the Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire. Overall trust was highly and significantly correlated with overall satisfaction (r=0.662), team task contribution (r=0.757), team social contribution (r=0.732), ethics (r=0.710) and team integration (r=0.707). Teammate trust significantly predicted athlete satisfaction, β = 0.68, t (72)= 8.422, p < 0.001. No significant differences were found for overall teammate trust or overall satisfaction between sport types. This study is the first of its kind to investigate the effect of teammate trust on athlete satisfaction. The results indicated that teammate trust was a significant predictor of athlete satisfaction, demonstrating that the relationships previously found in the organizational literature could be translated to sport.
