International Journal of Applied Sports Sciences 2005, Vol. 17, No. 2, 35-43.

Korea Institute of Sport Science

Association between Coaches' Behaviors and Players' Aggressive and Assertive Actions
S. M. VaezMousavi , & M. Shojaei
a b

University of Imam Hosseina, & University of Al-Zahrab, Iran

Coaches' behavior is one of the most important factors affecting young players' aggressive actions. Coaches' ignorance toward players' unwanted actions may sometimes perceived as positive feedbacks by players and support their aggressive behaviors. It is possible also that some coaches directly encourage players to accomplish aggressive acts. Therefore, ''in what extent young players aggressive actions correspond to coaches' behavior?,'' is the main question that the present study tries to answer. Accordingly, competitions in 2004 nation high schools championship (including 115 teams, 302 matches, and 1531 players in volleyball, basketball, handball, football, and futsal) were closely observed and players' aggressive and assertive behaviors were recorded. To code and analyze coaches' behavior, the coaching behavior assessment system (CBAS) was used. This instrument classifies coaches' behavior in twelve classes and is widely used in studies related to describing and analyzing coaches' behavior. Results indicated that most players' aggressive acts correlated with several coaches' behaviors, namely ignoring mistakes, reinforcement, keeping control, and mistake-contingent technical instruction. Moreover, it was found that girls committed more instrumental and boys more goal aggressions. The results are discussed in relation to the aggression literature. Investigation of causal relation of these behaviors is recommended. key words : Coaching behavior assessment system, Aggression, Assertive behavior
1)

Introduction
Relevance of several factors to players' aggressive behavior has been extensively studied. Sport-related factors were studied in the framework of context-personality (Isberg, 1985, 1986, 1989) or context-gender (Rainey, 1986; Kemler, 1988; Bond & Nideffer, 1992) relationship. Teams' moral atmosphere, team norms regulating aggressive acts, and players' perception of these norms are mentioned to be important in this circumstance (Stephens & Bredemeier, 1996). Difficulty of the task (McGowan & Schultz, 1989) and use of anabolic steroids (Lefavi, Reeve, & Newland, 1990) also appear to be relevant to aggression in sport. The relevance of communicating factors was also studied (Hanin, 1980) and practically discussed (Hanin, 1992). Coach-related factors are also of importance in this context. Coaching includes decision-making processes, motivational techniques, giving feedback, establishing interpersonal relationships and directing the team confidently. Good coaches provide not only a vision of what to strive for, but also the day-to-day structure, motivation, and support to translate vision into reality. Because of the importance of coaches' behaviors and its possible relation to players' behaviors, it seems that our understanding about the significance of this relationship needs improvement.
Received : 1 July 2004, Accepted : 28 September 2005, Correspondence : S. M. Vaezmousavi(mvaez_m@yahoo.com)

36 S. M. VaezMousavi, & M. Shojaei

Having studied coaches' behaviors extensively, some investigators tried to categorize coaching behaviors. Tharp and Gallimore (1976) after studying the behavior of the most successful NBA coach emphasized the importance of instruction and demonstration behaviors and their significant effects on players' success. At the same time, sport specific questionnaires were also developed. Danielson, Zelhart, and Drake (1975), revised the Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire to classify coaching behaviors into eight categories. On the other hand, researchers trying to develop guidelines for training coaches (Smith, Smoll, & Hunt, 1977; Smoll, Smith, Curtis, & Hunt, 1978) needed a proper tool to observe and classify coaches' behaviors; therefore, the Coaching Behavior Assessment System (CBAS) was developed for coding and analyzing the behaviors of coaches in natural field settings (Smoll & Smith, 1984). This system which was applied in the present study, divides coaches' behavior into twelve categories as follows: Reinforcement, Nonreinforcement, Mistake-contingent encouragement, Mistake-contingent technical instruction, Punishment, Punitive technical instruction, Ignoring mistakes, Keeping control, General technical instruction, General encouragement, Organization and General communication. According to Smoll and Smith (1984), distributions in the CBAS categories indicated that nearly two-thirds of caches' behaviors were found to be positive, falling into the categories of: a) positive reinforcement, b) general technical instruction, and c) general encouragement. Players who played for coaches, who frequently used encouragement, instructions, and reinforcement, demonstrated greater self-esteem at the end of season. They rated their teammates and their sport more positively. According to Weinberg and Gould (1995) these players reported that: "they liked their teammates more, felt their coaches were knowledgeable, rated their coaches better as teachers, had a greater desire to play again the next year, and had higher levels of enjoyment comparing to other young players" (p. 208). Having considered the association between coaches' and players' behaviors (Tharp & Gallimore, 1976; Danielson, Zelhart, & Drake; 1975), one may consider that some players' unwanted or negative actions may also be related to coaches' behaviors. Aggressive behaviors are among the most problematic behaviors in sport setting and reported to be somehow related to coaching behaviors. Isberg (1985) reported that coaches encouraged players to commit aggressive acts to win the game; such acts were often rewarded by coaches and teammates. Stephens and Light-Bredemeier (1996) observed that the power of context in elite level of competition, forced young soccer players to act aggressively even if they had different orientation. Special stress on relating players' aggressions to coaches' behaviors would be explained by Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1973), which emphasizes the important role that significant others have on the development or control of aggression (Smith, 1988). Therefore, the main objective of the present study was to investigate the reality and the amount of possible correlations among coaches' behaviors and players' aggressive acts in natural field settings.

Association between Coaches' Behaviors and Players' Aggressive and Assertive Actions 37

Method
Subjects
Subjects were high school students (n=1531), who took part in national high school championship 2004, in five different sport fields (volleyball, Basketball, Football, Handball, and futsal). Table 1 shows the detail.
Table 1. Type of teams, number of teams, number of players, number of matches, and number of data sheets filled out. sport Girls Handball Girls basketball Girls bolleyball Boys handball Boys basketball Boys volleyball Boys football Boys futsal Total no. teams 17 20 20 12 11 12 12 11 115 no. players 194 300 240 144 165 144 244 100 1531 no. matches 46 55 56 31 26 26 33 28 302 no. data sheets 92 110 112 62 52 52 66 58 604

Assessment of Aggression, Performance, and Coaches' behaviors

Previous attempts to measure aggression in sport settings have not been entirely satisfying. In most cases, aggression has most often been measured by tabulating the average number of penalty minutes accumulated per game by individuals and/or teams (Widmeyer & Birch, 1984). The problem associated with this technique is that some acts of aggressions go overlooked by game officials. Moreover, there are behaviors in the game that are penalized but according to the definition (Barron, 1977) they can not be included in the class of aggressive behaviors, since they do not involve intent to harm others. In the present study, identification of aggressive behaviors was not due to officials' recognition; rather, research group took responsibility to recognize and classify them. Experienced (mean experience=10 yrs) high school male and female coaches (n=23) acted as research assistants; all of them were graduated from university; holding B.S. (n=11), M.S. (n=10) and Ph.D. (n=2) in sport sciences. Accordingly, they were familiar with the sport related aggressions; together with their coaching experience, it was assumed that they were able to recognize aggressive parts in players' behaviors. Having acknowledged the complexity of the task, it was necessary to improve validity of the data; therefore, assistants took part in a two-day workshop aimed to advance their ability for applying their knowledge about aggressive acts in sport settings. In that workshop they were asked to distinguish players' goal aggressions, instrumental aggressions, and assertive behaviors in several real competitions. They also were trained to

38 S. M. VaezMousavi, & M. Shojaei

recognize and classify coaches' behaviors according to CBAS classifications. Having considered that assistants were all coaches, this part of training was rather uncomplicated. Only those coaches' behaviors were recorded that occurred at the time players' aggressive behaviors were observed. To further increase the validity of data, each assistant was recruited in his/her own special field. For each competition, there were two individuals observing events, one for each team. Events included: type of player behavior (instrumental/goal aggression and assertive behavior); type of coaches' behavior (twelve categories according to CBAS) and scores of the game at the time aggressive behavior occurred. Another individual supervised the procedure of collecting data and had the job of verifying the first coaches' judgments. The data were rejected whenever they reached a divergent conclusion in identifying an aggressive act. This was done to improve the psychometric value of the data. The Final product was a pair of integrated data sheets, for each game, one for each team.

Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics were used to describe findings. To test the hypothesis, non-parametric Pearson chi square test was used. Since the numbers of valid cases in most of the times were more than a hundred, Pearson's correlation coefficient was also used for a cross-examination purpose.

Results
To get an overall idea, the frequencies of all coaches' behaviors corresponded to players' behaviors are summarized in table 2. As one may see, 7 cases of girls' instrumental aggressions, 20 cases of their goal aggressions, and also 3 cases of their assertive behaviors coincided with coaches' reinforcement. When coaches' punishment is under scrutiny, the proportion of frequencies in instrumental/goal aggressions alters and corresponding frequencies changes to 11, 9, and 1. Ignoring mistake was the most frequent behavior coaches' committed in all cases. Since the number of matches did not correspond in boys and girls, no comparison between genders was possible. Therefore, a table of relative frequencies was produced. Then, percentages of twelve categories of coaches' behaviors are classified in relation to the field of competition in table 3. Obviously, ignoring mistakes was relatively the most frequent behavior coaches carried out, regardless of the field and gender. On the other hand, general encouragement and general unrelated communication were relatively less frequent behaviors. Considering gender differences, girls' volleyball coaches preferred to ignore mistakes (33.7%), rather than instruct generally (.9%); while in boys' volleyball the highest and the lowest percentage of coaches' behavior were non-reinforcement (36.1%) and general instruction (2.8%). Boys' basketball and handball coaches punished their players much more than girls' basketball and handball coaches (9.2% and 4.9% comparing to 2.9% and 1.7%, respectively).

Association between Coaches' Behaviors and Players' Aggressive and Assertive Actions 39

Table 2. Frequencies of all coaches' behaviors corresponding to players' aggressive and assertive behaviors Players' behaviors Coaches' behavior Reinforcement Gender Girl Boy Total Not Reinforcement Girl Boy Total M-encouragement Girl Boy Total M-instruction Girl Boy Total Punishment Girl Boy Total Punitive instruction Girl Boy Total Ignoring mistake Girl Boy Total Keeping Control Girl Boy Total General Instruction Girl Boy Total G-encouragement Girl Boy Total Organizing Girl Boy Total G-Communication Girl Boy Total Instrumental aggressions 7 26 33 27 3 30 13 3 16 48 36 84 11 10 21 29 12 41 162 65 227 134 15 149 45 7 52 4 4 8 22 10 32 2 14 16 Goal aggressions 20 74 94 60 28 88 20 11 31 48 80 128 9 37 46 19 16 35 109 170 279 50 57 107 29 6 35 11 6 17 12 12 24 10 28 38 1 1 5 3 8 1 1 2 1 3 4 1 3 3 6 23 28 51 17 1 18 10 3 15 18 1 Assertive behaviors 3 16 19 15 2 17 10 Total 30 116 146 102 33 135 43 14 57 99 131 230 21 47 68 51 31 82 294 263 557 201 73 274 74 14 88 20 13 33 35 23 58 13 45 58

40 S. M. VaezMousavi, & M. Shojaei

Table 3. Percentages of coaches' every behavior in relation to the field of competitions are shown in this table. Blank quarters indicate no obvious behavior in that category or they were rounded to zero Field / Coach beh. Rein. Non-rein. M. C. encour. M. C. T. instr. Punishment P. T. Instr. Ignoring mist. Keeping contr. General instr. General encou. Organization. General com. Total Girls handball 3.3 1.2 2.6 4.5 1.7 7.6 33.4 29.1 10.2 .5 5.7 .2 100 Girls' basketball 2.9 20.2 5.8 16 2.9 2.9 26 12.7 4.8 3.1 1.7 .8 100 5.6 33.7 20.2 9 3.4 4.5 9 100 Girls' volleyball 3.4 2.2 4.5 4.5 Boys' handball 18.6 1.3 .2 18.2 4.9 2.9 42.7 2.9 .7 2 .2 5.6 100 Boys' basketball 3.7 6.5 4.1 14.3 9.2 6.5 10.6 24.4 4.1 .9 9.7 6 100 2.8 2.8 100 2.8 8.3 13.9 2.8 Boys' volleyball 19.4 36.1 11.1 Boys' Futsal 1.5 6.9 1.5 5.4 3.4 2.5 50.2 9.9 7.4 6.4 1 3.9 100 Boys' Football 16.8 2.9 .7 22.2 6.7 7.5 36.7 1.8 4.1 .1 .3 .3 100

No comparison was possible between girls and boys in football and futsal, since data related to girls in these two fields were not collected; however inspection of boys' data alone gives us valuable information about distribution of coaches' behaviors. For example, percentage of reinforcement in football was eleven times higher than what it is in futsal. Finally, the results of Pearson's chi-square test indicated that five out of twelve CBAS categories correlate with players' overall aggressive behaviors. These categories were as follows: non-reinforcement, Mistake contingent technical instruction, Punishment, Ignoring mistake, and Keeping control. Pearson's r test confirmed this finding only in four latter categories. All correlations were positive.
Table 4. The results of the Pearson's chi-square and Pearson's r test of the hypothesis. Only five categories of coaches' behavior correlate with players' aggression Coach behavior / test Pearson chi-square df. p. N. Valid Pearson r. p. Nonreinforcement 7.46 2 .024 135 .64 .457 M.C.T. instruction 13.524 2 .001 230 .242 .000 Punishment 9.546 2 .008 68 .25 .040 Ignoring mistake 53.718 2 .000 557 .262 .000 Keeping control 63.761 2 .000 274 .280 .000

Association between Coaches' Behaviors and Players' Aggressive and Assertive Actions 41

Discussion
It was found that the frequency of players' aggressive behaviors correlates with several categories of coaches' behaviors. According to smith (1971), coaches' behavior and reactions associate with the nature and frequency of players' behavior and shape various patterns of aggressive behaviors. According to CBAS, coaches' behavior divided into two categories: Spontaneous behaviors and Reactive behaviors. The coach initiates spontaneous behaviors. Reactive behaviors on the other hand, are responses to a specific player behavior. An interesting finding of the present study is that the correlation of players' aggressions with coaches' behaviors was only significant when only coaches' "reactive behaviors" were under scrutiny. The reactive behaviors consist of: reinforcement, Nonreinforcement, mistake-contingent encouragement, mistake-contingent encouragement, technical instruction, punishment, punitive technical instruction, ignoring mistakes and keeping control (Smoll & Smith, 1984). It was found that players aggressions were correlated to five behaviors. Obviously, coaches' reactive behaviors somehow connected with young players' reacting aggressively. Coaches' spontaneous behaviors, on the other hand, which may be more expected from more experienced coaches (Weinberg & Gould, 1995), may result in better outcomes and more desired players' behaviors. No significant correlations were found among these behaviors, namely general technical instruction, general encouragement, and organization, and players' aggression. Apparently this idea should not be neglected in coach training programs. The significant relationship between ignoring mistakes and players' aggression was in accordance with Isberg (1985, 1989) and Bredemeier (1994). Investigating context-personality relationship, Isberg (1985, 1989) examined how ice hockey players of various skill levels commit aggressive acts and how they explain it. Results showed that serious violation of the rules occurred every third minute of the game and very few resulted in a penalty (Isberg, 1985). The author concluded that because of the power of the context, players would be forced to either behave aggressively, or leave the team. It seems that ignoring mistakes by the coach are well considered as an encouragement or "a green light to continue" and may reinforce aggressive acts. Bredemeier (1994) observed similar tendencies in 12-year-old boys, and 12 and 14 year old girls soccer players. The effect of coach behaviors on players' aggression depends also on other factors such as personality, previous experience, physical and mental fitness... These factors select if coaches' behaviors provoke aggression (Bredemeier, 1983). Players' comprehension of so-called "grey zone of sport violence," (Gill, 1994) is affected by significant others' (in this case, coach) values and behaviors; therefore, behavior such as ignoring mistakes may associate with young player's aggression. The grey zone of sport violence is the region in which violent acts forbidden by the rules are more or less accepted by significant others. One boundary of the grey zone is defined by the rules of the sport or the interpretation of those rules, and the other is defined by the society's laws and norms (Gill, 1985). Coaches' leadership strategy that may manifest in coaching behaviors could insert its' effect on players' aggression by narrowing or widening the grey zone of sport violence. According to Smith (1977), players who perceive that their coach strongly emphasized winning showed significantly higher levels of aggression, were more willing to use illegal tactics, and had a more highly professional attitude toward competition than players whose coach did not emphasize winning. The

42 S. M. VaezMousavi, & M. Shojaei

future direction of the present study will examine coaches' orientation toward the competition outcomes. Aggression is a multivariate phenomenon and caused by interaction of individual, environmental, and task-related factors (Scholtz & Willemse, 1991). Therefore, one may expect that natural frustration caused by mistakes, may reduce young players' threshold to control their behaviors and if there is a sufficient amount of environmental cues, they may commit aggressive acts. Thus, when mistakes happen, mistake contingent technical instructions and punishment may provoke aggressions. This is not only in accordance with Social Learning Theory, but could be extensively explained by revised Frustration-aggression theory as well. The Social learning theory (Bandura, 1973) explains aggression as behavior learned through observing others model behaviors then getting reinforcement for exhibiting similar actions. The revised Frustration-aggression theory (Berkowitz, 1964, 1989), states that increased arousal and anger caused by frustration, only result in aggression when socially learned cues signal the appropriateness of aggression in a particular situation. This may be the main contribution of the present study to the field of sport psychology. It was previously comprehended that coaching behavior may affect players' actions, but the present findings specifically indicate that which part of coaching behavior may be associated with players' aggression. This may well be used by coaches as a precaution in their communication with young players. In general, the overall findings of the present study are applicable for junior athletes coach training programs.

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