The revised leadership scale for strength and conditioning

The purpose of this study was to establish reliability scores for the Revised Leadership Scale for Strength and Conditioning (RLSSC). Modifications were made to the Revised Leadership Scale for Sport (RLSS) (Zhang et al., 1996) to make it specific to strength and conditioning. Sixty-one Division I athletes from a large public southeastern university responded to the scale. Fifty-three scales were deemed usable and analyzed to assess a reliability score. Reliability scores, determined by Cronbach\u27s alpha, ranges from: \u27social support\u27, .75; \u27situational consideration\u27; .76, \u27training and instruction\u27, .90; \u27democratic behavior\u27, .83, \u27autocratic behavior\u27, .64; and \u27personal feedback\u27, .84. Reliability scores revealed were within acceptable limits. Validity for the RLSSC can be inferred through the already established reliability and validity scores of the RLSS. The RLSSC is a reliable and valid instrument to assess leadership preference of athletes. _ Recommendation for use of the RLSSC include assessing athlete\u27s perception of leadership, strength and conditioning coaches perception of their own leadership, and a qualitative study to provide a thick, detailed description of leadership between strength and conditioning coaches and athletes

Athletes\u27 Experience of Poor Coaching

Effective coaching has long been associated with winning. Because of this conceptualization of effective coaching, researchers have tended to study the behaviors and thought processes of winning coaches, but not how these behaviors and thought processes affect athletes. Very little research has looked at poor, ineffective coaching, specifically from the athletes‟ perspective. Because of this, our understanding of poor, ineffective coaching is limited. The purpose of this study was to explore collegiate, professional and semi-professional athletes‟ perceptions of poor coaching. An existential phenomenological research design provided the framework for understanding athletes‟ experience of poor coaching. Data were collected via in-depth interviews with 16 athletes (10 male, 6 female; 12 Caucasian, 4 African-American). Athletes described a total of 33 poor coaching experiences that occurred in a variety of sports (baseball, basketball, football, soccer, softball) at several competitive levels (youth, middle school, high school, collegiate, and professional). Data were analyzed using phenomenological methods, similar to the constant comparative method, which led to the identification of five themes that constitute the essence of athletes‟ experience of poor coaching: Not teaching, Unfair, Uncaring, Inhibiting, and Coping. Because the athletes talked about poor coaches who were both winning and losing coaches, it was clear that for the athletes, poor coaching was not associated with losing

Case Closed: An Earnest Review of Ganon\u27s Case Study as Research Method

Gagnon\u27s (2011) text is the most recent contribution to the growing corpus of knowledge on case study research. As a whole, the text contains all of the typical parts one would expect in an introductory text on case study research. The text begins with a brief discussion of paradigms and epistemologies and then gives way to issues of reliability and validity. Next, the reader is taken through a step-by-step approach to case study research with chapters on data collection, analysis, interpretation and writing reports. Drawing upon his own experiences using case study method, Gagnon identifies enduring concerns and provides several practical tips for the novice researcher. However, the text could be improved by a clear definition of case study and a lucid explanation of the relationship between methodologies and method

A Reflexive Pragmatist Reading of Alvesson\u27s Interpreting Interviews

Remember those interviews you collected for that qualitative research study? How did you address issues of interviewee power, impression management and rationality? Was it trustworthy ? Really? In Interpreting Interviews, Mats Alvesson summarizes the current state of thought on interviews as a tool for qualitative data collection and challenges this framework as simplistic and failing to account for its complexities as a social act. Alvesson argues for a critical consciousness and pragmatic approach to interviews. This review blurs genres from autoethnography and more traditional approaches while taking Alvesson\u27s approach, reflexive pragmatism, to its logical consequences. As a whole, Interpreting Interviews is timely, intellectually stimulating, and the latest (un)fortunate wrench in the qualitative research machine

From “Bitch” to “Mentor”: A Doctoral Student’s Story of Self-Change and Mentoring

For several reasons, the process of writing and completing the doctoral dissertation has been identified as the most frequent road block for many promising scholars. The goal of this study is to help improve doctoral student dissertation completion by focusing on the crucial, central concerns of effective student writing, faculty mentoring, and the student-advisor relationship. Using an experimental, evocative autoethnographic approach, the following study shows the struggles and successes of a doctoral student managing himself, the university, “life”, and most importantly, his doctoral dissertation chair. The findings weave together strategies from storytelling (e.g., plot, characters, and scene) with the personal experiences of a doctoral student and advisor to show a highly contextual narrative and the influence of multiple factors. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the value of situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as an approach to help students learn to write. Lastly, as a pedagogical tool, the narrative itself may be of practical value to graduate students, dissertation chairs, and policymakers for the purpose of improving graduate student success

A Comparative Analysis of Factors Influencing Spectatorship of Disability Sport: A Qualitative Inquiry and Next Steps

To effectively market a sport event, it is necessary to determine the factors that influence spectator attendance. While a developed line of inquiry exists on the marketing of able-bodied sports, a gap in the literature exists in the disability sport context. Thus, there is a need to examine the synergy between existing motives that have been confirmed in traditional sport versus those that are unique to disability sport. This line of inquiry will help future researchers determine whether additional factors should be considered when marketing disability sport. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the explicit and tacit motives of spectator attendance at disability sport. Findings from the Quad Rugby Nationals indicate that while some of the traditional sport spectator motives in the literature are the same, there are also unique motives, which should be used to accurately measure spectator interest in this emerging context