How to measure compassion in coaches? The validation of a new scale to assess the compassion coaches’ experience towards their athletes

ABSTRACT

The current study aimed to validate The Compassionate Coach Scale-Coaches Version (CCS-CV) that assesses the compassion coaches’ experience towards their athletes. Two independent samples of coaches completed self-reported measures. The calibration sample (N = 196) was used to test the structure of the CCS-CV through a confirmatory factor analysis, and the validation sample (N = 287) was used to confirm its structure, through cross-validation, and examine aspects of its validity. One higher-order factor with two lower-order factors presented an adequate fit to the data. CCS-CV demonstrated high internal consistency, convergent, discriminant, and external validity. CCS-CV is a reliable measure that allows the assessment of the compassion coaches’ experience towards their athletes and seems to be a significant contribution for practical and research fields in sports context. The present study contributes to the availability of a new instrument that allows an assessment of qualities that could be beneficial to coaches and their athletes.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• compassion
• confirmatory factor analysis
• cross-validation
• sport

Data Sharing Policy

The data are not publicly available due to restrictions (e.g. their containing information that could compromise the privacity of research participants).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT): [Grant Number SFRH/BD/143410/2019].