Effects of a Motivational Climate Intervention for Coaches on Young Athletes’ Sport Performance Anxiety

TLDR

The mastery approach to coaching is a cognitive‑behavioral intervention that fosters a mastery‑involving motivational climate, which prior studies link to lower athlete anxiety. The study examined whether training coaches in this approach would alter the motivational climate and reduce male and female athletes’ cognitive and somatic performance anxiety across a basketball season. Results showed that athletes coached with the intervention perceived a more mastery‑involving climate and experienced significant decreases in all Sport Anxiety Scale‑2 subscales and total anxiety, while control athletes’ anxiety increased, with similar benefits observed for both boys and girls.

Abstract

The mastery approach to coaching is a cognitive-behavioral intervention designed to promote a mastery-involving motivational climate, shown in previous research to be related to lower anxiety in athletes. We tested the effects of this intervention on motivational climate and on changes in male and female athletes’ cognitive and somatic performance anxiety over the course of a basketball season. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that the athletes in the intervention condition perceived their coaches as being more mastery-involving on the Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sports when compared to athletes in an untreated control condition. Relative to athletes who played for untrained coaches, those who played for the trained coaches exhibited decreases on all subscales of the Sport Anxiety Scale-2 and on total anxiety score from preseason to late season. Control group athletes reported increases in anxiety over the season. The intervention had equally positive effects on boys and girls teams.