The relationship between psychological violence by coaches and conformity of young athletes to the sport ethic norms

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between psychological violence by coaches and conformity of athletes to the sport ethic. The objectives of this study are to verify whether the athletes’ conformity with sport ethic norms is related to psychological violence by the coach and whether this relationship varies in function of sex and type of sport practiced by the athlete. Athletes (n = 1089) from Canada aged 14–17 years in various sports completed an online questionnaire. Athletes responded to validated scales assessing psychological violence by coaches and conformity to the sport ethic norms. To study the relationship between these two factors, correlations were performed and a multiple linear regression model was used. This study demonstrated associations between the norms ‘self-sacrifice’ and ‘refusal to accept their limits’ and psychological violence by the coach. These relationships were moderated by sex and type of sport. Among girls participating in individual sports, the more they conformed to ‘self-sacrifice’, the more they experienced psychological violence by the coach. Conversely, among boys participating in team sports, the more they also conformed to this norm, the less they experienced this form of violence. Moreover, regardless of sex, the more athletes participating in individual sports conformed to the ‘refusal to accept their limits’ norm, the less they appeared to experience psychological violence by their coach.

Keywords:

• Psychological violence
• athletes
• coach
• sport ethic

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 There are currently various words to speak of psychological violence in sports literature, such as emotional abuse, emotional maltreatment, psychological maltreatment, and psychological abuse. To refer to these concepts globally, the term ‘psychological violence’ has been used in this article. On the other hand, out of respect for the authors who broached the subject in their research, we also tried to use the specific terms used by specific authors when we report their results/findings.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant [108560] and Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur du Québec under Grant [104153].