Division-I Student-Athletes’ Affective and Cognitive Responses to Receiving Confirmation From Their Head Coach

Abstract

Coach confirmation—a behavior that encompasses coaches’ recognition, endorsement, and acknowledgment of athletes—has been forwarded as an effective coaching behavior that redresses ineffective and antisocial patterns of coaching. Empirical evidence of its effectiveness, however, has been limited to athlete affect and based on data from retrospective samples of former high school athletes. This study addresses these limitations by exploring the effectiveness of coaches’ use of confirmation with collegiate student-athletes and considers its influence on their satisfaction with coaches and sport, competitiveness, and cognitive learning. Data obtained from 177 Division-I student-athletes revealed that coaches’ use of challenge increases student-athletes’ satisfaction, motivation, competitiveness, and learning, whereas the use of acceptance only determines satisfaction. These findings demonstrate that confirmation is an effective coaching behavior, its dimensions function independently, and challenge best fulfills the multidimensional nature of coaching effectiveness. The implications of this data reveal that confirmation theory functions uniquely within the athletic context, and coach effectiveness is largely determined by the implementation of strategies and efforts to refine skill sets and assist in development.