2022 Volume 49 Issue 2 Pages 123-135
Recently, studies have shown that gratitude has a positive effect on athletes’ mental health and on the maintenance and improvement of relationships. However, it is not clear as to what kind of perception of the group environment can enhance athletes' gratitude. We aimed to assess athletes’ perception of the group environment in relation to promoting gratitude (perceived gratitude environment). A total of 138 university athletic club students were asked to complete an open-ended questionnaire. The data was analyzed using the qualitative procedures outlined by Côté et al. (1993). We created tags from the data and gathered tags with similar meanings. Subsequently, we labeled the cluster of tags (categories) to reflect the topic in brief. As a result, we found that there are four aspects of the perceived gratitude environment: relationships formed by expressions of gratitude, gratitude of team members, activities expressing gratitude, and norms of gratitude expression. In future research, the findings of this study should be used to determine the kind of perception of the group environment that promotes gratitude in athletes.
