Athletes' satisfaction as mediator of transformational leadership behaviors of coaches and football players' sport commitment relationship

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediation role of athlete satisfaction on the relationship between transformational leadership style of Iranian high schools’ coaches and sport commitment of Iranian high schools’ football players and also to develop a coaching model. The survey design, correlational study and inferential statistics were applied in this research. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied as a strong procedure to analyze the data and develop the models. Population of this study was 558 football players (15-20 years). 280 high schools’ football players were selected to participate in this study by using the simple random sampling procedure. Instruments of the study were MLQ (Avolio and Bass, 1995), SCMS (Scanlan,et al., 1993) and ASQ ( Riemer and Chelladurai, 1998). Moreover, SEM and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) applied for testing hypotheses of the study. The results of the study indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership style of coaches and athlete’s satisfaction of football players. In addition, athlete satisfaction significantly mediated the relationship between transformational leadership style of coaches and sport commitment of football players. All fit indices of the measurement and mediation models were acceptable. There these models were fit the data of the current study. Findings of this study revealed that transformational coaches with increasing satisfaction of football players would increase the sport commitment of football players

Transformational leadership, athletes' satisfaction and sport commitment: a study of Iranian high school football teams

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership style of Iranian high schools’ coaches, sport commitment and athletes’ satisfaction of Iranian high schools’ football players. The survey design, correlational study, and inferential statistics were applied in this research. The SEM was applied as a strong procedure to analyze the data and to develop the models. This study conducted in Alborz province of Iran. Population of this study was 558 football players (15-20 years), participating in an annual tournament that is organized by the Ministry of Education’s sport department of Iran. A total of 280 high schools’ football players were selected to participate in this study by using the simple random sampling procedure. Instruments of the study were MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1995), SCMS (Scanlan, et al., 1993) and ASQ (Riemer & Chelladurai, 1998). The results of the study indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership style of coaches, sport commitment (r = .419, β =.478, ρ value=.001), and athlete satisfaction of football players(r = .386, β =.443, ρ value=.001). Therefore, it can be concluded that transformational leadership behaviors can increase sport commitment and athletic satisfaction of high schools’ football players. Structural model was fit the data of the current study