Coach and Athlete Burnout - West Virginia University

Burnout 15
athletes from burnout out. An autocratic decision-making style may keep coaches from
burning out but may enhance the likelihood athletes experiencing burnout (Dale &
Weinberg, 1989; Price & Weiss, 2001). There are three versions of the LSS. One form
examines athletes’ preferences of coach leadership behavior. Another assesses athletes’
perception of their coach’s leadership behaviors. The last assesses the coach’s perception
of their own leadership behaviors. The latter two forms were used in the present study.
In completing the leadership perception inventory athletes are asked to respond by
indicating how often their coach exhibits particular leadership behaviors. Their answers
for each question are anchored from 1 to 5, with 1 denoting “always” and 5 denoting
“never.”
In its first stage of development (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1978), the LSS contained a
pool of 99 items modified or created from already existing leadership scales. One
hundred sixty male and female physical education students completed the inventory, the
results of which were factor analyzed. This analysis yielded a similar five-factor model
that the current LSS contains (training behavior, social support, rewarding behaviors,
autocratic behaviors, democratic behaviors). Items that were retained from this first stage
were those that had a loading of at least .40 for their respective subscale, but did not load
above .30 for any other scale. Thirty-seven items met these criteria and were therefore
retained for further inventory development.
The second stage of development (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) included the
addition of 13 new items. Because no items of the training subscale examined teaching
behaviors of coaches, seven items were added to this subscale in order to assess
instructing behaviors. In addition, six more items on the social support subscale were