The entrepreneurial characteristics of national board certified health and wellness coaches

ABSTRACT

Efforts to professionalise the health and wellness coaching field led the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching to establish a national board certification for health and wellness coaching in 2017. The certification helped define the boundaries of the field and created standards of practice. Definition of the health and wellness coaching field makes possible research focused on quantifying characteristics of national board certified health and wellness coaches (NBC-HWCs). While much is known about the efficacy of health and wellness coaching, little is known about NBC-HWCs. This study documented the sociodemographic characteristics of NBC-HWCs and examined their interest in entrepreneurship as related to gender and age. More than half of the NBC-HWCs wanted to enter private practice after training. Entrepreneurial intention was similar for women and men, and age was positively correlated. Understanding the entrepreneurial intention of NBC-HWCs has implications for health and wellness coach training programs to examine how students’ career goals are supported.

KEYWORDS:

• Health and wellness coaches
• entrepreneurial intention
• individual entrepreneurial orientation
• gender
• age

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching for providing access to the NBC-HWC population and making contact on author’s behalf.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Although the initialism of entrepreneurial intention is typically ‘EI’ within entrepreneurship literature, EntInt has been used as the abbreviation for the coaching audience to avoid confusion with ‘emotional intelligence.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jyenny Babcock

Jyenny Babcock is Associate Director for Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness at California State University, Fullerton where she oversees accreditation, assessment, and quality assurance functions, and leads analytical studies. Before working in higher education, Jyenny was a marketing executive in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Past research topics include the entrepreneurial intention of health and wellness coaching students, academic persistence by men of colour, and student engagement in first-generation students. Having recently earned a Leadership EdD with a focus on health and wellness, she is transitioning into wellness promotion.