Does coaches’ satisfaction with the team determine their interpersonal style? The mediating role of basic psychological needs

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to examine how coaches’ satisfaction with the team could be related to their reported interpersonal style towards young athletes, and to analyze the mediating role of basic psychological needs (i.e. need satisfaction and need frustration) in this relationship. Participants were 352 coaches (16–67 years old; M_age = 32.88, SD = 11.14) from 48 clubs, who had between 1 and 52 years of training experience (M = 23.23, SD = 15.02). Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to test the relationships between variables. Results showed that satisfaction with the team is positively related to coaches’ need satisfaction, and negatively to their need frustration. Need satisfaction positively predicted coaches’ need-supportive style, and need frustration predicted their need-thwarting style. Regarding indirect effects, need satisfaction positively mediated the relationship between coaches’ satisfaction with the team and their need-supportive style, and need frustration negatively mediated the relationship between coaches’ satisfaction with the team and their need-thwarting style. These findings are a first step to highlight satisfaction with the team as an antecedent of coaches’ self-reported need-supportive and need-thwarting behaviours towards athletes, and the mediating role of coaches’ psychological needs (need satisfaction and need frustration) in this relationship.

Highlights

• We examined the satisfaction of the team as antecedent of coaches’ interpersonal style.

• We tested the mediating role of coaches’ psychological needs in this relationship.

• Satisfaction with the team was positively related to need-supportive style.

• Satisfaction with the team was negatively associated with need-thwarting behaviors.

• Coaches’ psychological needs mediated the relationship between team satisfaction and their interpersonal style.

KEYWORDS:

• Basic psychological needs
• coaches
• interpersonal style
• mediation
• team satisfaction

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the European Social Fund and Government of Extremadura (Spain) under Grant: PO17012.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We avoided formulating any hypothesis between need satisfaction and need thwarting, and need frustration and need-supportive style, in view of prior research (Rocchi & Pelletier, 2017; Stebbings et al., 2012).

2 Not all hypotheses were previously preregistered.

3 Psychometric properties for all scales are presented in Supplemental Table 1.

4 Procedure details and data were archived publicly in order to maximize transparency, accountability, and reproducibility of the project (https://osf.io/9qhnw/).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Social Fund [grant number PO17012] and Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades.