The impact of congruence between perceived and preferred leadership on satisfaction among college student-athletes in Singapore

Abstract

Chelladurai developed the Multidimensional Model of Leadership, which was designed to be situation-specific to examine leadership behaviour and effectiveness in sporting contexts. Applying Chelladurai's concept to the Singapore sporting context, this study aimed to assess the impact of congruence between perceived and preferred leadership behaviours on satisfaction with leadership among college student-athletes in Singapore. Data were collected from 185 college student-athletes enrolled in the five local tertiary institutes. The questionnaire utilized in this study consisted of the perception and preference versions of the Revised Leadership Scale for Sports and seven items measuring satisfaction with coaching leadership. Confirmatory factor analysis and a series of hierarchical multiple regression procedures were carried out to test the psychometric properties of the leadership scale and the hypothesized relationship between congruence levels and satisfaction. Results revealed congruence of perceived and preferred behaviour in social support was a significant indicator of athletes' satisfaction. Possible implications from the findings were discussed in an effort to better understand coaching effectiveness in Singapore.

Keywords:

• coaching leadership behaviour
• satisfaction
• congruence
• multidimensional model of leadership

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the funding support for this project from Nanyang Technological University under the Undergraduate Research Experience on CAmpus (URECA) programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean government [NRF-2011-413-G00017].