Perceived Esteem Support Predicts Competition Appraisals and Performance Satisfaction Among Varsity Athletes: A Test of Organizational Stressors as Moderators

Abstract

Organizational stressors may be important factors influencing athletes' sport experiences. In this study, we examined organizational stressors as “background variables” (Gump & Matthews, 1999) that may impact athletes' perceptions of support and appraisals of competitive stressors. Perceptions of available esteem support, organizational stressors, competitive appraisals, and performance satisfaction were prospectively examined among varsity team sport athletes (N = 84). Esteem support was positively related to athletes' perceptions of satisfaction with performance, and the indirect effect through secondary appraisal was significant. Two types of organizational stressors moderated the association between esteem support and secondary appraisal: More frequent coaching stressors weakened the association between esteem support and secondary appraisal, whereas more frequent team and culture stressors strengthened the association between esteem support and appraisal. These results support previous research (cf. Freeman & Rees, 2009), indicating that perceived available esteem support was positively associated with athletes' assessments that they had the necessary resources to cope with competitive stressors, which positively predicted performance satisfaction after a competition. Furthermore, these findings suggest that higher levels of coaching stressors were associated with poorer perceptions of having the necessary resources to cope with competition stressors, whereas conversely, higher team and culture stressors were not necessarily detrimental to athletes' perceptions of their resources to cope with competitive demands. These results suggest that different types of organizational stressors may have differential impacts on athletes' sport experiences.

Acknowledgments

We thank Mark Eys for his contributions to this project, as well as Tess Palmateer, Sabrina Thai, and Ben Schellenberg for their assistance with the data collection and analysis for this project.

Notes

1 We also controlled for gender in preliminary models (e.g., we removed two individuals from the sample and coded gender as male = 0 and female = 1), but given that gender is not a dichotomous variable, was not equally reported across options, and is not expected to change the strength or direction of the proposed relationships, we felt that it was more appropriate to remove gender as a covariate in all final models rather than remove individuals for reporting other options than male or female.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this article was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This research was also supported by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.