Athlete Leadership Development

The Development, Implementation and Evaluation of an Athlete Leadership Development Program with Female Varsity Athletes

Summary

Adequate leadership has been identified as a significant piece within the discipline of sport psychology (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2016). Athlete leadership was characterized as an individual that had maintained an informal or formal role within a team that shaped the group dynamic in order to accomplish a similar goal (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2016). With an increasing demand to understand how leadership can be fostered in athletes, the researchers sought out to establish, implement, and assess a leadership development program (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2016). While leader development

The sample was 27 female athletes which consisted of 12 basketball players and 15 volleyball players. Basketball players made up 44 percent of the sample while volleyball players consisted of 55 percent of the sample. The athletes’ ages ranged from 18 to 27 years. Athletes were required to fill out pre-intervention questionnaires which focused on human, social, and capital outcomes. Following the pre-intervention data collection, athletes engaged in four leadership development workshops over time a period of three months. A range of learning strategies were included in each work shop that included case studies, anticipatory, retrospective reflection activities, and multimedia. Workshops lasted approximately one hour. At the completion of the workshops post-intervention data was gathered on similar questionnaires given to the participants at the beginning of the intervention (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler,

The study measured leadership behaviors, athlete satisfaction, motivational climate, cohesion, and communication. To assess these measures researchers used the Leadership Scale for Sports(LSS), the Differentiated Transformational Leadership Inventory (DTLI), Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire(ASQ), the Peer Motivational Climate in Youth Sport Questionnaire(PeerMCYSQ) and the Scale of Effective Communication in Team Sports-2 (SECTS-2) (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2016). The accumulated quantitative data was collected from the beginning and the end of the intervention program by the form of pre-test and post-test questionnaires. Focus groups were established with 10 athletes who took part of the leadership development program. The goal of the group was to assess the leadership program’s social validity in regards to the significance and adequacy of intervention, goals, methods, and results (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2016). Remarks by the athletes who attended the focus groups were include in the analysis