Abstract
The present study examines the effects of students’ perceptions of the student-coach relationship and their coaches’ feedback on students’ intrinsic motivation in high school athletic clubs. We administered questionnaires on 1,071 high school students (604 males, 467 females) belonging to school athletic clubs. The questionnaire probed the studentsʼ perceptions of the student-coach relationship, their coachsʼ feedback, and the studentsʼ intrinsic motivation. Analysis consisted of the following. First, items concerning the student-coach relationship were used to score closeness/trust; based on these scores, students were divided into groups of high and low levels of closeness/trust with their coaches. Next, analysis of factors in items regarding coaches’ feedback confirmed the following three factors: praise/encouragement, reproach, and absence of feedback.We also performed respective multiple regression analyses of the effects of coaches’ feedback on students’ intrinsic motivation for both groups.In the high closeness/trust group, praise/encouragement and reproach were shown to be positively correlated with intrinsic motivation, while in the low closeness/trust group, a positive correlation was shown only with praise/encouragement. Furthermore, we conducted path analysis to examine how the effects of coaches’ feedback on students’ intrinsic motivation are mediated by the student-coach relationship. This analysis showed that coaches’ feedback affects closeness/trust, which in turn affects intrinsic motivation.
