The effects of coaches' experience on the motivational and pedagogical climate in youth sport

Abstract

The study analyzes the effects of the coaches' professional experience on the coach-athlete communication during competitions, achievement goal orientations, sport attitudes and athletes' perceptions of the coaches'behaviour. Using the Coach Behaviour Assessment System/CBAS (Smith, Smoll & Hunt, 1977), 18 games of six Basketball coaches (three of them experiencent and three unexperient) of male under-16 years teams were audio and video recorded and subsequently analyzed. The players of the observed teams (n = 58) fulfilled the portuguese versions of the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire/TEOSQ (Chi & Duda, 1995), the Sport Attitudes Questionnaire/SAQ (Lee & Whitehead, 1999),and of the CBAS questionnaire about the perceptions of the coaches' behaviour. The results show a statistically significant effect of the coaches' experience both on the behaviour categories observed during competition and on the questionnaires' dimensions.