The Effects of Accountability on Task Accomplishment in Collegiate Football

Abstract

An A-B-A-B withdrawal design was used to evaluate whether accountability, in the form of public posting, was effective in improving football players’ performance in successfully blocking the forward momentum of the defense and in running routes to a criterion at, or greater than, 90% correct. Five wide receivers on a college football team participated in the study. Data were collected during practice sessions and weekly games. The players’ game performance was not intervened on and served as a measure of both the generality of the intervention and as a product measure of the practice performance. The data show that during public posting the players’ performances met or exceeded the criterion established for practices and that this criterion performance generalized to the game setting. These results support previous findings on tasks and accountability. Moreover, the public posting intervention was easy to implement by the coaches and welcomed by the players.