Determinants of feedback retention in soccer players

This study analyzed soccer players' retention of coaches' feedback during training sessions. We intended to determine if the retention of information was influenced by the athletes' personal characteristic (age, gender and the sports level), the quantity of information included in coach's feedback (the number of ideas and redundancy), athletes' perception of the relevance of the feedback information and athletes' motivation as well as the attention level. The study that was conducted over the course of 18 sessions of soccer practice, involved 12 coaches (8 males, 4 females) and 342 athletes (246 males, 96 females), aged between 10 and 18 years old. All coach and athlete interventions were transposed to a written protocol and submitted to content analysis. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression were calculated. The results showed that a substantial part of the information was not retained by the athletes; in 65.5% of cases, athletes experienced difficulty in completely reproducing the ideas of the coaches and, on average, the value of feedback retention was 57.0%. Six variables with a statistically significant value were found: gender, the athletes' sports level, redundancy, the number of transmitted ideas, athletes' perception of the relevance of the feedback information and the athletes' motivation level.