Leadership, cohesion and satisfaction : differences between swimming and handball portuguese teams

• Autor(a) principal: Gomes, António Rui
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Outros Autores: Lopes, Heitor, Mata, Rui Trocado
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/12395
• topic: Sport leadership; Cohesion; Athletes satisfaction; Liderazgo en el deporte; Satisfacción; Cohesión; leadership in sport; Social Sciences

The present study analyses the differences between athletes of collective and individual sports in the perception of coaches’ leadership and in cohesion and satisfaction experiences. The participants were 260 handball and 207 swimming athletes who competed at a national federate level. Three main aspects were analyzed: i) the differences between the perceptions of swimming and handball athletes concerning the coaches’ leadership (multivariate variance analysis); ii) the differences between the perceptions of swimming and handball athletes concerning cohesion and satisfaction experiences (“t-tests” for independent samples); and iii) the prediction of satisfaction with leadership assumed by athletes (multiple regression analysis). Three results must be highlighted: i) swimming athletes evaluated more positively their coaches and assumed more cohesion and satisfaction; ii) there were differences in the perception of leadership depending on the gender, competitive level, years of work with the coach and in the sports records achieved with the current coach; and iii) a greater capacity to predict the satisfaction with leadership in handball than in swimming sports was found. Implications of these results for intervention and future research are discussed.