Design and preliminary validation of the Barriers to Sports Coaching Questionnaire for Women in South Africa: An application of the ecological model

The purpose of this study was to develop and preliminarily validate a questionnaire to examine barriers to coaching that are encountered by women sports coaches in South Africa. Two series of studies were conducted to assess content and face validity, factorial structure, and reliability of a new questionnaire. In study one, 40 items were developed based on LaVoi and Dutove’s ecological model of barriers and supports for female coaches and a thorough literature review. A panel of experts was employed to explore content validity and suitability of the provisional items. In study two, an initial 35-item questionnaire (the Barriers to Sports Coaching Questionnaire for Women; BSCQW) was administered to 152 women sports coaches who were working in South Africa. Principal component analysis was used to reduce items and determine the factorial structure of the questionnaire. Analyses resulted in a 32-item BSCQW, which consists of intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational, and socio-cultural barriers to coaching. The most proximal barriers were organisational (M = 2.71, SD = 1.24) and interpersonal (M = 2.22, SD = 1.04). The findings indicate that the overall internal consistency of the BSCQW was .81, demonstrating that the questionnaire was reliable. Thus, BSCQW is a valid tool to assess barriers experienced by women sports coaches in South Africa. Further rigorous psychometric assessments are warranted

Perceived coach leadership style and psychological well-being among South African national male wheelchair basketball players

Background An understanding of psychological welfare in sport is essential for the advancement of coach development frameworks and practices to meet the needs of contemporary disabled athletes. Objective This study investigated the perceived coach leadership style and psychological well-being (PWB) of South African senior national level male wheelchair basketball players (n = 16, M age = 32.13, SD = 6.62 years). Methods An exploratory, quantitative cross-sectional study design was employed in which the Leadership Scale for Sport, Subjective Vitality Scale, and Ryff's Psychological Well-being Scale were utilised to collect the data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to describe and analyse the data respectively. Results Players exhibited high levels of subjective vitality and overall PWB. The perceived coach leadership style was strongly represented by the exhibition of training and instruction, and positive feedback behaviour which were also moderately and significantly associated with players' subjective vitality scores and various dimensions of PWB. Moderate and strong negative associations were also noted between players' positive relations with other and the coach's exhibition of democratic, and autocratic leadership behaviour respectively. Essentially, hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that components of perceived coach leadership style were not found to predict PWB. Conclusion Although further investigation on national level disabled athletes is warranted, it was concluded that aspects of coaches' leadership style in conjunction with athletes' national level experience could contribute to athletes' professed states of PWB in their sport environment. This study represents essential yet persistently understudied information on selected social settings in sport