| Effective and successful athletic coaches need to be able to motivate team members to perform at the highest possible level. To motivate team members, athletic coaches must treat the members with concern for personal preferences. In existing studies of coaching preferences, participants have not been distinguished on the basis of gender. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the preferences of female college athletes in coaching style and gender of their coaches. The study was nonexperimental in design. A total of 108 female collegiate-level athletes within the Southeastern Conference (SEC) completed a survey indicating whether their sport was individual or team in nature and whether they preferred a male or a female coach. There was an option to indicate no preference. Participants also completed the Revised Leadership Scale for Sports, a Likert-type survey instrument, indicating levels of preference for each of six leadership styles: (a) teaching and instruction behavior, (b) democratic behavior, (c) autocratic behavior, (d) social support behavior, (e) positive feedback behavior, and (f) situational consideration behavior. Participants preferred male coaches to female coaches (chi 2 [1, N = 63] = 17.20, p < .001) when they expressed a preference, and differences were not significant when there was an option for no preference (p = .07). An analysis of variance showed significant differences among coaching style preferences (F[5, 642] = 234.14, p < .001). The autocratic style of coaching was the least preferred style, and situational consideration and teaching and instruction styles were the most preferred styles. Findings will help female college athletes and coaches in strengthening their professional relationship. For future research, a qualitative study with in-depth interview questions will be beneficial in obtaining more information regarding this population. |
