Moderating Effects of Gender and Types of Sport on the Relationships Between Coaching Leadership, Athletes’ Psychological Needs, and Motivation Among University Athletes in Malaysia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderation effects of gender on the relationships between the athletes’ perception of coach’s leadership (CL) and athletes’ basic psychological needs (BPN) and the moderation effect of types of sports in relation to their sport motivation (AM) level among university athletes. A total of 350 university athletes, consisting of 199 males and 151 females from 9 contact sports and 14 noncontact sports participated in this study. The measurement model was first tested for internal reliability, construct reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity for all constructs. The results of structural model showed that athletes’ perception of coaches’ leadership was significantly related with athletes’ basic psychological needs, and subsequently, athletes’ basic psychological needs were significantly related with athletes’ motivation. PLS-MGA results indicated that there was a significant moderation effect of gender on relationship between athletes’ perception of coach leadership and athletes’ psychological needs. Similarly, the types of sports significantly moderated the relationship between athletes’ psychological needs and athletes’ motivation. As a conclusion, coaches’ leadership style has an influence on the psychological needs satisfaction of the athletes, and this subsequently affects athletes’ motivation. However, these relationships were being moderated by gender and types of sports, respectively. Hence, coaches must take into consideration the gender factor and the types of sports when training the athletes.