Practice and Assessment of the Team Building Approach for Human Resource Development in Elite Youth Soccer Players

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects a team building (TB) program for human resource development in elite youth soccer players. For this purpose, we conducted a TB program for 35 elite youth players (Mage = 16.57, SD = 1.065) belonging to the youth academy of a professional football club in Japan. This TB program was composed of specialized tools such as TPI (Todai Personality Inventory) and organization development methods based on the principles of transactional analysis. We used the Sport Self- management Skill scale (Takemura et al., 2013) and the Belief in Cooperation Scale (Nagahama et al., 2009), to examine the effects of this TB program from the viewpoint of before-after study. Responses to these questionnaires were collected from the participants before and after the intervention of this program. Furthermore, to verify the effects qualitatively, we collected free descriptions about the impressions of the program from participants. The paired t-test showed that the scores of subscales ("usefulness of cooperation" and "individual orientation") in the Belief in Cooperation Scale were significantly changed after the experience of the TB program (p< .001). Moreover, it was shown that the score of Sport Self-management Skill was improved by this TB program (p<.001). From the text analysis, based on the KJ methods, various factors about the program’ s effects were clarified, such as promotion of “self-understanding”, “clarification of own problems”, “goal setting” and so. These results suggest that this TB program is effective for promoting human resource development for elite youth soccer players, and it can be said to be a practical and academically important discovery.