Development of a Model for Predicting Team Performance

Abstract

The present investigation attempted to develop and test a model for competitive team success which would be capable of prediction regardless of the skill level of the players. The first hypothesis predicted that successful volleyball teams would have greater team cohesion and would be coached by a task-oriented leader. Initially, data were analyzed by means of a 2 × 2 (team success × level of skill) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with five dependent variables. Dependent variables consisted of two measures of cohesion and three measures of leadership. Results confirmed the presence of greater team cohesion within successful teams. All winning teams also perceived their coaches to exhibit a greater degree of initiating structure. The second hypothesis proposed that measures of cohesion and leadership could be identified which were most capable of discriminating between successful and unsuccessful teams. Results of the discriminant function analysis with stepwise F tests showed that the two measures of cohesion were the most powerful predictors of team success, with little additional predictive power being contributed by the third measure, that of initiating structure demonstrated by the coach. The present model was able to correctly classify 77.46% of the players as members of winning or losing teams based upon their scores on the three predictors included in the discriminant function.