Coach and Athlete Burnout - West Virginia University

Burnout 28
perceiving their coach to be more autocratic in their decision-making reported higher
levels of burnout on the sport devaluation and reduced sense of accomplishment
subscales compared to those athletes perceiving their coach as being less autocratic in
their decision-making.
Gender, Democratic Decision-Making Style, and Burnout Among Swimmers
Three two-way (gender x high/low democratic) ANOVAs were also computed to
examine any interactions between collegiate swimmers’ gender and a perceived coaches’
democratic decision-making style on these athletes’ own levels of burnout. Again, each
burnout subscale (e.g. exhaustion, sport devaluation, reduced sense of accomplishment)
was used as a dependent variable for each ANOVA conducted. Swimmers’ scores on the
perceived democratic decision-making behavior subscale of the LSS were recoded as
being either a high or low democratic perception. Similar to the autocratic scale, a
median split was used to determine if scores were categorized as high or low. Those
scores above the median were classified as high democratic perception and those below
categorized as a low democratic perception of coaches’ decision-making style.
The results of the ANOVAs revealed no significant interactions between gender
and high/low democratic perceptions of collegiate swimmers on any of the three burnout
subscales. No significant main effects were found for gender on any of the burnout
subscales. However, statistically significant main effects did emerge for high/low
democratic decision-making behaviors as a result of the analyses. A significant main
effect was found for high/low perceptions of democratic behaviors with regards to the
exhaustion burnout subscale (F (1, 87) = 6.13, p