Abstract:
The coach-athlete relationship has been identified as one of the key components of an
athletes’ sport experience. In the competitive collegiate sport setting, this relationship has shown
to be even more influential due to the duration of the relationship of coach-athlete relationship
and the challenging time of identity transition for these college athletes. Because of coach
behaviors known influence on such an important relationship, research has explored the potential
antecedents for why coaches engage in certain types of behaviors, specifically autonomy
supportive and controlling coaching behaviors. One unresearched area of coach behavior
influences is religious beliefs. Participants included NCAA DIII, NAIA and NCCAA individual
sport athletes (n=114) and coaches (n=77) from both religious and secular institutions. The
Athletes were surveyed using the Autonomy Supportive Behavior Scale, Controlling Coach
Behavior Scale, and open-ended questions and the coaches surveyed through open-ended
questions. Following the one-way MANOVA, results indicated a significant difference between
athletes perceived autonomy coaching behavior in religious (M=33.66, SD = 6.16) and secular
(M=27.20, SD=8.99) institutions. Additionally, results concluded there to be no significant
difference between controlling coaching behavior or the controlling coaching subscales between
groups, but qualitative results show support towards a potential difference in negative
conditional regard. Athletes’ perception of the frequency of their coaches overall controlling
coaching behavior was very low compared to prior research regarding the prevalence of
controlling coaching behavior in the collegiate setting.
