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The association between autonomy-supportive coaching and athletes' personal best performance: indirect associations
Mingrun Gao1, Daliang Zhao2,3
1Sports Business School, Guangzhou Sport University, Guangzhou, China.
Introduction:
Although autonomy-supportive coaching has been widely recognized as beneficial for athletes' motivation and performance, associations between autonomy-supportive coaching and athletes' personal best performance remain insufficiently understood. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this study examined the associations among autonomy-supportive coaching, basic psychological need satisfaction, autonomous motivation, and athletes' personal best performance, within a theory-informed associative framework.
Methods:
A total of 411 provincial-level athletes from multiple sports in China completed validated questionnaires assessing perceived coach autonomy support, basic psychological need satisfaction, and autonomous motivation. Athletes' personal best performance was operationalized using official national competitive grading standards and transformed into a continuous indicator. Structural equation modeling with bootstrapping procedures (5,000 resamples) was employed to examine and compare competing models.
Results:
The results showed that coach autonomy support, psychological need satisfaction, and autonomous motivation were each positively associated with athletes' personal best performance. Inferential conclusions regarding the two indirect associations were based exclusively on unstandardized indirect effect estimates (B) and their bootstrapped confidence intervals, both of which indicated statistical significance. No statistically significant direct association between coach autonomy support and personal best performance was observed; however, statistically significant indirect associations consistent with the proposed theoretical framework were identified.
Discussion:
Although these findings are consistent with the SDT framework, the cross-sectional design precludes causal or temporal inference. All results should therefore be interpreted as reflecting patterns of association. The study offers theoretical and practical implications regarding associations between coaching practices and long-term athletic achievement.
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