Coach and Athlete Burnout - West Virginia University

Burnout 16
also included. Further, before administering this revised, 50-item scale to participants the
authors quantified the intermediate response categories. Behaviors classified as
occurring “often,” “occasionally,” and “seldom” were assigned frequencies of 75%, 50%,
and 25%, respectively. This was done to clarify the frequencies of the classifications for
participants. Physical education students completed a form assessing their preferences of
coach behaviors. Varsity athletes were also assessed on their preferences and perceived
coach behaviors. Following the completion of this inventory, factor analyses were again
conducted on all three sets of data. In order for an item to be retained from this second
evaluation it needed to have its highest loading on the same factor of each of the three
data sets. In addition, its loading was required to be at least .30 in two of the three data
sets. Using these criteria, 40 items were retained. Thirteen items were kept for the
training and instruction subscale, 8 items for the social support subscale, 5 items for the
positive feedback scale, 5 items for the autocratic behavior subscale, and 9 items for the
democratic behavior subscale. The authors note that coefficients of determination for the
physical education students’ preferences, athletes’ preferences, and athletes’ perceptions
were 41%, 39%, and 56%, respectively.
Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated for each of the five subscales in all
three data sets (physical education students’ preferences, athletes’ preferences, and
athletes’ perceptions). All coefficients were above .70 except the autocratic scores for
the physical education students (.66) and the athletes’ preferences (.45). To establish
test-retest reliability of the LSS the Chelladurai and Saleh (1980) administered the form
to the physical education students with an interval of four weeks between testings. Test-
retest reliability coefficients ranged from .71 to .82 and were deemed adequate.