Basic psychological need satisfaction, behavioral regulations in performance and administrative tasks in coaching

Abstract

  Coaches are required to undertake a variety of tasks related to their teams and athletes. These include performance tasks (e.g., conducting practice, practice planning), and administrative tasks (e.g., booking the bus and training facilities).  The impact of different task requirements on coaches’ motivation has not been examined.  From a foundation of self-determination theory, we hypothesized that performance tasks would associate with more self-determined forms of behavioural regulation, which would, in turn, associate with greater job satisfaction, over and above psychological needs satisfaction.  A sample of 272 club volleyball coaches (71% male) completed measures of psychological needs satisfaction, general behavioural regulation, and behavioural regulation specific to administrative and performance tasks, and job satisfaction.   A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted according to the tenets of self-determination theory such that psychological needs satisfaction was entered in the first block, followed by behavioural regulations for each of administrative and performance tasks, with the latter two blocks also modelled in reverse order.  An overall significant model resulted explaining 24% of the variance in job satisfaction. Results showed positive associations of psychological needs satisfaction to job satisfaction that were not attenuated by behavioural regulations or task specific regulations.  In addition to needs satisfaction, job satisfaction was significantly predicted positively by identified regulation for performance tasks, and negatively by extrinsic regulation for performance tasks and identified regulation for administrative tasks. There was a notable positive correlation between extrinsic regulation for administrative tasks and intrinsic regulation for performance tasks. These results suggest that engaging in administrative tasks might negatively effect coaches’ job satisfaction; to the extent they are externally regulated. Category:  Sport and Exercise Psychology   Key words:  coaching, psychological need satisfaction, behavioral regulation, performance tasks, and administrative tasks.