Youth Sport Coaches: Factors That Predict Satisfaction with the Coaching Experience

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among sources of coaching satisfaction and coaching efficacy in youth hockey coaches. Previous research has limited coaching satisfaction to professional and paid coaches. With increasing pressure placed on the volunteer youth sport coach and the high turnover rate, the need to understand the continued participation motivation of youth sport coaches exists. Additionally, satisfaction has historically been linked to work motivation (Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959), and the factors that contribute to coaching satisfaction may provide some insight into developing methods to decrease turnover in youth coaches. Previous research indicated that highly efficacious coaches were more likely to continue coaching than coaches with low efficacy (Feltz, Chase, Moritz, & Sullivan, 1999). There is a paucity of coaching satisfaction literature, and the literature is nonexistent regarding volunteer coaches. Therefore, the framework for the exploration of this topic was derived from coaching efficacy. In the coaching efficacy literature factors such as coaching education, coaching experience, playing experience, perceived ability of the team, and social support significantly predict coaching efficacy. This study added perceived improvement of the team and coaches’ age as predictors of coaching efficacy. More notably, this study examined coaching satisfaction as an outcome of the previously mentioned sources of efficacy and coaching efficacy itself. The functional importance of understanding coaches’ satisfaction and efficacy is the athlete development cycle. The importance of good coaches notwithstanding, if those coaches who are deemed “good” do not continue to coach, then the athlete development cycle suffers as much as with a large influence of too many inadequate coaches. If skilled coaches are not finding some personal satisfaction in coaching, then long-term retention may be difficult to achieve (Andrew & Schwab, 1995). This reiterates the supposition that satisfaction with coaching enhances the athlete development cycle, and ultimately is a component of increased performance. Additionally, preparing instructors and coaches properly through specific education processes is hypothesized to increase satisfaction (Sullivan, Paiement, Brachlow, & Bagnell, 2005). This study was conducted using a survey questionnaire methodology and was quantitative in nature. Participants for this study were 512 (496 men, 16 women) amateur ice hockey coaches. Of the 560 coaches who were provided questionnaires at the clinics, 23 exercised their right to refuse participation; 537 coaches filled out surveys, with 25 eliminated due to incomplete questionnaires. The University’s Institutional Review Board and USA Hockey granted permission to conduct the study. The participants were recruited from USA Hockey Level 1, 2, and 3 coaching clinics that were held in the midwestern and northeastern United States within the final 6 weeks of the 6-month long season. The sample included respondents who were participants at the coaching clinics; the Level 1 clinic was an initiation level and is targeted at first-year coaches. Level 2 clinics are called introductory level and are for more experience coaches; Level 3 clinics are for intermediate level coaches with at least 3 years of coaching experience. The timing of data collection was selected to allow participants to gain the experience necessary to accurately