UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES School of Education What makes up the Coach-Athlete Relationship? by Sara Almeida Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2018 Table of contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 9 Academic Thesis: Declaration Of Authorship .................................................................... 11 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. 13 Personal Statement ........................................................................................................... 15 Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 17 Sport .............................................................................................................................. 17 Research Problem ......................................................................................................... 18 Olympic Games .......................................................................................................... 19 Olympic Games Rio 2016 ........................................................................................... 20 History of Athletics: How everything began .................................................................... 21 Current structure and organisations of Athletics in Portugal ....................................... 23 Current structure and organisations of Athletics in England ....................................... 23 Being a coach in Portugal and England ...................................................................... 24 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 29 Chapter Two ...................................................................................................................... 31 Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 31 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 31 The coach ................................................................................................................... 32 The athlete .................................................................................................................. 39 Coach-Athlete Relationship ........................................................................................ 42 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 51 Chapter Three ................................................................................................................... 53 Conceptual framework and Model Development ........................................................... 53 Identity of the Participants .......................................................................................... 54 Relationship variables ................................................................................................. 55 Outcomes....................................................................................................................... 72 2 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 72 Chapter Four ..................................................................................................................... 75 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 75 Research Design and Philosophy .................................................................................. 75 Methods ......................................................................................................................... 80 Stage 1 ....................................................................................................................... 80 Stage 2 ....................................................................................................................... 80 Stage 3 ....................................................................................................................... 86 Stage 4 ....................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 97 Chapter Five ...................................................................................................................... 99 Interviews' Analysis ........................................................................................................ 99 Study Participants ....................................................................................................... 99 Interview Findings and Discussion ............................................................................ 101 Chapter Six ..................................................................................................................... 125 Description of the Respondents ................................................................................... 125 Research Objective 1: Psychometric analysis of the Coach-Athlete Relationship Inventory (CARI) .......................................................................................................... 126 Steps involved to examine the factors ...................................................................... 126 Research Objective 2: Cross Cultural Comparison of the Survey Data ....................... 132 Questions ................................................................................................................. 132 Chapter Summary ........................................................................................................ 136 Chapter Seven ................................................................................................................ 139 Discussion.................................................................................................................... 139 Exploring coaches and athletes’ perceptions of their relationship ............................ 139 The Coach-Athlete Relationship model (CAR) ......................................................... 141 Inventory Development and application .................................................................... 145 3 Research Methods limitations ................................................................................... 146 Contribution to research ........................................................................................... 146 Contribution to policy makers ................................................................................... 149 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 150 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 153 Appendix A – Participant Information Sheet .................................................................... 169 Appendix B – Consent Form ........................................................................................... 171 Appendix C – Interview Schedule ................................................................................... 173 Appendix D – Interview Transcripts ................................................................................. 177 Appendix E – Ethics Clearence ....................................................................................... 202 Appendix F – Questionnaire ............................................................................................ 203 Appendix G – Reliability of the 8 Scales .......................................................................... 207 Appendix H – Descriptive Statistics ................................................................................. 209 Appendix I – Strenght of the Relationship among the 57 items ....................................... 215 Appendix J – KMO and Bartlett’s test .............................................................................. 217 Appendix K – Normality of the 8 Scales .......................................................................... 219 Appendix L – MANOVA between the 8 Scales and Gender ............................................ 227 Appendix M – MANOVA between the 8 Scales and Age Group ..................................... 231 Appendix N – MANOVA between the 8 Scales and Country ........................................... 235 4 Table of Figures Figure 1 England coach education pathway (Athletics 2018) ............................................ 28 Figure 2 The coach-athlete relationship model (Jowett and Meek 2000 ) ......................... 47 Figure 3 New conceptual model of the coach-athlete relationship (CAR) ......................... 54 Figure 4 Carron’s conceptual system for cohesiveness in sports teams 1982 .................. 58 Figure 5 Research Process Source: Inspired by Saunders et al. (2009) ........................... 78 Figure 6 England and PT coaches’ years of Athletics experience ................................... 100 Figure 7 England