How Can the Stages of Peck's Community-Making Model be Identified and Predicted for a Collegiate Basketball Team Over the Course of Consecutive Seasons?

The purpose of this study was to explore how Peck's (1987) stages of Community-Making could be identified and predicted for a collegiate basketball team over the course of consecutive seasons by exploring Cohesion, Flow, and athletic performance. The study utilized a repeated measures longitudinal survey design with the members of a Division I collegiate level female basketball team (N = 13) during the athletic seasons of 1999/2000 and 2000/2001. Participants completed both the Group Environment Questionnaire (Carron, Brawley, & Widmeyer, 2002) and the Flow State Scale -2 (Jackson & Eklund, 2003) pre and post competition at several times over the course of the athletic seasons, respectively. Furthermore, athletic performance statistics were collected for the athletic seasons. The data in this study was analyzed using descriptive data analysis, trend graphs, correlational analyses, and regression analysis by way of discriminant analysis. The researcher examined the data analyses and looked for evidence of the stages of Community-Making over the course of the season via the constructs of Cohesion, Flow, and athletic performance. Given the constructs of Flow State, Cohesion, and performance, the researcher determined that the team experienced the stage of Emptiness/Community during the nine-game winning streak. Attributable to the literature (Peck, 1987) regarding the characteristics of a group in Pseudo-Community, the team for this study most likely experienced a stage of Pseudo-Community during the first four games of the season. Considering the dynamic and recursive nature of an athletic season, the researcher determined that the team may have in fact experienced a stage of Chaos both concurrently and subsequent to Pseudo-Community. In effect, it was determined that the team experienced an optimal experience during the nine-game winning streak. Due to data limitations and the sample size it was not possible to predict what would occur for a second season. However, a three stage model of team development was proposed contiguous the team's nine-game winning streak. There is a great deal that is not fully understood about the concept of team development, but suggestions are made for further research into this fascinating phenomenon