Khizra Khurshid (BS, 2014-2018) Supervisors: Arooj Arshad & Saima Ghazal, PhD
Current study was intended to explore the relationship between coach’s leadership behavior, athlete’s motivation and decision making. It was hypothesized that (a) the coach’s leadership behavior (training and instruction, democratic, positive feedback, autocratic and social support) would have positive relationship with athlete’s motivation and decision making, (b) decision making (thoroughness, control, hesitancy, social resistance, optimizing, principled, instinctiveness) predicts the athlete’s motivation and leadership scale and (c) athlete’s motivation and decision making vary as their gender. Correlational research design was applied in this study and purposive sampling technique was used to collect a sample. The sample consisted of 100 athletes within the age range of 16- 21 years 18.54 (3.14) from sports departments of public universities of Lahore. Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS; Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) was used to assess coach’s leadership, athlete’s motivation was measured by Sport Motivation Scale (SMS-28; Pelletier, et al., 1995), and decision making was measured by Decision Making Questionnaire (DMQ; French, et. al., 1993). The results were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Positive feedback leadership ship had positive correlation with sport motivation and decision making. Subscales of decision making (thoroughness and hesitancy) is predicted by subscale of sport motivation (extrinsic motivation). Subscale of decision making (social resistance) is predicted by subscales of sport motivation (intrinsic motivation). Subscale of decision making (principled) is predicted by subscales of leadership (autocratic behavior, positive feedback) and subscale of sport motivation (motivation). Subscale of decision making (instinctiveness) is predicted by subscale of (training & instruction) and subscale of motivation (intrinsic motivation). Results of independent sample t-test indicated that sport motivation and decision making had no significant gender differences. Moreover, this research was important in identifying different leadership styles that positively effects so that training programs was designed to their coaches regarding these particular leadership styles in Pakistan.
Keywords: Coach, leadership behaviour, athlete’s motivation, decision making.