Abstract
Athletes possibly experience a great deal of stress which may cause anxiety and burnout. Athletes’ perceptions of their coaches’ behaviors influence their performance and psychological well-being. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between athletes’ perception of their coaches’ coaching behaviors and burnout, and also to examine the medication effects of competitive trait anxiety on the relationship. A total of 368 collegiate athletes participated in the study, and their ages ranged from 20 to 26 years old (Mage = 21.21 years, SD = 1.07 years). A cross-sectional research design was employed to collect the data. Descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling are utilized to analyze the data. Trait anxiety in athletes had a significant correlation with athlete burnout as well as significant pathways. Controlling coaching behaviors were significantly related to athletes’ competitive trait anxiety, whereas autonomy-supportive coaching behaviors were not significantly related to trait anxiety. A significant positive pathway from controlling coaching to trait anxiety was observed. The bootstrapping results indicated a significant and indirect pathway from controlling coaching to athlete burnout via competitive trait anxiety. Given that controlling coaching behaviors affected trait anxiety and, in turn, burnout, it is concluded that coaches should provide less controlling coaching to reduce anxiety and burnout in athletes.
Highlights
Sport environments can provide excessive stress for athletes, and long-term exposure to the stress may cause burnout [1,2]
All three components of trait anxiety were significantly related to physical and exhaustion and sport devaluation, but intriguingly there was no significant correlation between all emotional exhaustion and sport devaluation, but intriguingly there was no significant correlation three trait anxiety components and a reduced sense of accomplishment
All components of controlling coaching behaviors were significantly correlated with all three dimensions of athlete burnout
Summary
Sport environments can provide excessive stress for athletes, and long-term exposure to the stress may cause burnout [1,2]. Raedeke [3] first proposed the multidimensional construct of burnout by adopting Maslach and Jackson’s definition of burnout (i.e., a psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment) [4]. Because depersonalization in Maslach and Jackson’s definition is negative feelings and reactions towards clients and is less applicable to athletes, Raedeke [3] replaced depersonalization with sport devaluation in order to explain athletes’ negative feelings and attitudes toward their sports and defined athlete burnout as a syndrome composed of emotional and physical exhaustion, sport devaluation, and a reduced sense of accomplishment. Due to the lack of a valid and reliable questionnaire to measure burnout in athletes, Raedeke and Smith [5] later developed a sport-specific burnout questionnaire (i.e., Athlete Burnout Questionnaire; ABQ). Public Health 2019, 16, 1424; doi:10.3390/ijerph16081424 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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