Keywords

1 Introduction

The roles of coaches have become more complex as sport has revolutionized and become increasingly professionalized. Coaches must possess both the coaching process knowledge and sport-specific knowledge in order to ensure success and the overall improvement of an athlete. Coaches are normally been viewed as a motivator, but in reality, coaches hold many other responsibilities and roles to fulfill their ultimate goal of ensuring quality performance of their athletes in competition. Coaching roles have grown to become more technical, more pedagogical, and more demanding of multitasking competencies [1, 2]. Previous studies have stated that coaches were appointed to be as counselors, organizers, leaders, teachers, and motivators besides many other roles in their profession [3, 4]. Even though coaches serve many roles in sports area, their roles in improving athletes’ athletic skills and mastery of basic skills specifically in technical, tactical, psychological, and physical preparation for sporting events are more important aspects for them to become a successful coach [5].

Coaching required the use of various methods and strategies to accomplish various expectations. Therefore, they have to be multitasking (to acquire good knowledge and skills and to be highly motivated in delivering responsibilities to develop quality athletes). As a matter of fact, a competent coach is able to motivate their athletes to perform confidently in their games [6].

According to Lim et al. [5], although Malaysia has some great achievement in several sports such as diving, badminton, squash, and cycling, other Malaysian athletes are finding it very difficult to at par or maintain such reliable position. One of the reasons put forward is the incompetency of the local coaches in handling Malaysia athletes. The quality or level of competency of coaching in Malaysia is said to be less encouraging because coaches were not up to date in their coaching techniques in the coaching systems due to the lag in the support of scientific knowledge in sports and this has also been highlighted by the secretary of Olympic Council of Malaysia, Sieh Kok Chi, that Malaysian coaches were incompetence and have led to shortcomings of Malaysian sports [5].

Sukan Malaysia or better known as SUKMA is a national-level sporting event for youth athletes. It is the platform for each respective state in Malaysia to display their talented athletes. Due to this, every state in Malaysia has engaged sports coaches for various sports to prepare their states’ youth athletes for the SUKMA tournaments. However, such developmental programs involving significant amount of money need high and continuous commitment. Hence, the question that is a concern to many stakeholders is whether do these states’ youth team coaches possess good coaching efficacy and are able to develop the potential athletes?

Fung [7] defines coaching efficacy as “the extent to which coaches believe that they have the ability to enact behaviors and fulfill tasks expected of coaches” (p. 13). Coaches need to be confident and have the capability to plan game strategies such as matching up the team’s strategy with the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents [3]. If a coach has low level of self-efficacy, it may have a detrimental effect on athletes’ performance. Conversely, if the coach has high self-efficacy, it may help in influencing his or her own performance, as well as the athletes’ performance during training and competition. Past study has identified four dimensions of coaching efficacy which are motivation, technique, strategy, and character building [7, 8].

There are many factors that can influence the level of coaches’ efficacy in coaching such as coach education, coach development, and the use of psychological strategies. An interesting finding that is worth noting is that Gilbert and colleagues noted that most coaches felt the most important knowledge sources that helped them develop their coaching styles were their “day-to-day coaching experience” [9].

Raja and Kee [2] in their study on youth sports coaches found that overall coaching efficacy scores for Malaysian youth coaches were high and showed similar capabilities in coaching and have the same potential as others to be successful coaches in the type of sports they coached. However, in their study, they found that coaches who coached team sports have lower coaching efficacy level compared to coaches who coached individual sports.

Although there are numerous researches [2, 5] that study on coaching efficacy among Malaysian youth sports coaches, few actually studied on the factors that can affect the coaching efficacy. Therefore, this purpose of study is to identify the factors that may affect the coaching efficacy level, especially in youth team sports coaches.

2 Methodology

2.1 Participants

A total of 77 youth team sports coaches from 14 states who coached in Sukan Malaysia (SUKMA) 2012 volunteered to serve as participants in the study. These participants were selected through a purposive sampling comprising of various team sports (badminton, gymnastic, hockey, lawn ball, archery, tenpin bowling, sepak takraw, and volleyball).

2.2 Outcome Measure

The Coaching Efficacy Scale or CES [8] questionnaire that has been translated to Malay language [2] was used to measure the coaches’ coaching efficacy. The reliability of the CES questionnaire in this study is 0.94.

3 Statistical Analysis

The data collected for this study were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 17. Descriptive analysis such as frequencies was calculated to illustrate the characteristics of coaches. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to assess the ability of four control measures (level of coaching courses attended, coaching experience, level of playing experience, and education level) to predict levels of coaching efficacy (CES).

In addition, preliminary analyses were conducted to ensure the assumption of normality, linearity, multicollinearity, and homoscedasticity was met.

Since the data were categorical in nature, additional steps are needed to ensure that the results are interpretable. This step includes recoding the categorical variable into a number of separate, dichotomous variables, also known as “dummy variables”. Dummy coding uses only ones and zeros to convey all of the necessary information on group membership. One of the categories then serves as the “reference” category for comparison with other categories.  This current study measures on four different variables which are coaching education, coaching experience, playing experience, and level of education. For coaching education, there are four levels (Never attended, Beginner, Intermediate, Advance) and the Never attended act as “reference” category, and three dichotomous variables were constructed (Beginner vs Never attended, Intermediate vs Never attended, Advance vs Never attended). The reference category (Never attended) was then compared with the three dummy variables created (Never Attended vs Beginner, Never attended vs Intermediate, Never Attended vs Advance). For coaching experience, it can be converted into one dummy variable which is coaches who have experience of more than 5 years versus coaches who have experience of below 5 years. For playing experience, there are three levels (School, State, National) and playing experience at school level act as “reference” category with two dichotomous variables constructed (State vs School, National vs School). For education level, there are four levels (SPM, Diploma, Degree, Postgraduate) with Postgraduate act as “reference” category and three dichotomous variables being constructed (SPM vs Postgraduate, Diploma vs Postgraduate, Degree vs Postgraduate).

4 Results

Table 1 shows that majority of respondents are male coaches (males = 56, females = 21). Furthermore, the majority of coaches were above 36 years of age (75.3 %). In terms of education level, the majority of coaches (88.3 %) have some form of tertiary education (diploma holder or higher).

Table 1 Gender, age, and education level among team sports SUKMA coaches
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Table 2 shows the coaches’ attributes in relation to their academic qualification, their playing experience, and their coaching experience.

Table 2 Level of playing experience, coaching courses attended, and coaching experience among team sports SUKMA coaches
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In terms of playing experience, majority of the coaches had experience playing at the state level (n = 39, 50.6 %), while another 26 coaches had experience playing at the national level (n = 26, 33.8 %).

Furthermore, most of the respondents (n = 65, 84.4 %) have reported that they have attended before the coaching courses organized by the Malaysian Sports Council, while 18.2 % (n = 28) of them have revealed that they have not attended any coaching courses organized by the Malaysian Sport Council before. Overall, in terms of level of coaching courses attended, there was fairly even spread among the participating coaches. However, coaches who had attained the intermediate level of coaching were slightly more (n = 26, 33.8 %) than other levels (Table 2).

In terms of the level of coaching experience, more than two-thirds (n = 52, 67.5 %) of the coaches have more than 5 years of involvement in coaching. This indicates that majority of the coaches are not new to coaching at least at SUKMA level.

The means and standard deviations of each subscale of the CES, which includes motivation, technique, game strategy, and character building efficacy, are presented in Table 3.

Table 3 Coaching efficacy among team sports SUKMA 2012 coaches
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Overall, Malaysian SUKMA coaches who coached team sports showed high mean scores of total coaching efficacy (M = 7.68, SD = 0.17). In terms of subscales, the top three of highest mean scores by the coaches are in character building subscale (M = 7.78, SD = 0.57) motivation subscale (M = 7.69, SD = 0.51), and game strategy (M = 7.66, SD = 0.57). On the contrary, these coaches scored lowest in technique subscale (M = 7.61, SD = 0.65).

Table 4 shows the result for multiple regression. In the final model (Step 4), there were five variables that have statistically significant contribution (p < 0.05) with the intermediate level of coaching course recording a higher beta value (β = 0.71, p < 0.001) than other variables.

Table 4 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis for variables predicting level of coaching efficacy
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5 Discussion

Becoming a coach for a youth sports team is an important and challenging role. A coach is responsible for teaching and guiding a number of young people. Other than developing the numerous techniques and skills associated with a sport, coaches play an important role in building character of young athletes. The CES measurement developed by Feltz has been widely used in past studies to measure the confident or efficacy level among school and collegiate coaches [8]. It measures the coaches’ efficacy in carrying out duties based on the four subscales of coaching tasks, which are motivation, technique, game strategy, and character building. Coaches who have a high degree of coaching efficacy do give a more positive feedback [10].

Findings from this study indicated that the level of coaching courses attended by the coaches was a good predictor for the coaches’ level of coaching efficacy. Previous research [6] has shown that factors that influence changes of coaching behaviours and coaching efficacy are the attendance of formal coaching courses. Study by Fung [7] stated that attending coaching education programs that help in providing mentor teaching for less experienced coaches would help improve their commitment in coaching. Coaching education or coaching courses were found to have a significant relationship with coaching efficacy, and it has been proven by past studies [11, 12] that coaching course-attended coaches have affected the outcomes of coaching efficacy in both youth (aged 12–16 years) and adult coaches. Trudel [13] reviewed that coaches’ efficacy knowledge, beliefs, and behaviours are positively affected by coaching course program (Canada’s National Coaching Certification Program). More specific to the current study, past studies [14–17] reported that youth sport coaches viewed that coaching education program is an important component of their growth and development. The current result supported major past studies that the impact of coaching course/education/program is significant for youth sport coaches. Previous study, furthermore, supported that coaching education programs were the most effective method in increasing the coaches’ coaching efficacy and also their competency [18, 19]. Thus, coaching courses attended by the Malaysian SUKMA coaches may have boosted their confidence level in coaching their athletes.

On the contrary, several studies [14] investigated on how elite or expert coaches develop their knowledge have found that there are disparity in the perceived importance of formal coach education program toward coaches knowledge development. However, there is a common agreement that the learning process that the coaches got from discussion with other coaches, mentoring, and own playing experience does play a significant role in their coaching efficacy. These studies conclude that coach education should not be strictly delivered through formal courses and that other factors that can influence coaching efficacy such as coaching experience and the observation of other coaches should also be considered [9, 18].

Results in this study also showed that Malaysian SUKMA coaches who had more years of coaching experience show higher mean score in all four subscales of coaching efficacy compared to coaches who had fewer years of coaching experience. This finding was similar to several past studies which also stated that coaching experience affects coaching efficacy [20, 21]. Many of the studies cited so far also showed that day-to-day learning experiences in the field were more valued by coaches compared to their attendance of formalized learning venues [22, 23]. This is because the number of hours a coach spent in the sporting venue, coaching, and interacting with athletes was longer compared to the time he or she might spend in a formalized learning environment [9]. Longer past coaching experiences and time spent on the field usually gave the coaches opportunities to demonstrate and correct their athletes’ skills and techniques.

In past studies, coaching experience had been correlated not only with higher levels of technique efficacy subscale, but also with game strategy efficacy subscale [19, 23, 24], motivation efficacy subscale [22, 24], and character building efficacy subscale [23]. Possible reason for this finding is as mentioned by Feltz and colleagues that coaching experiences allow the coaches to be able to motivate the athletes, demonstrate skills effectively, recognize talent and diagnose skill errors, and affect the mood and psychological states of the athletes [20]. Therefore, it can be concluded that the years Malaysian SUKMA coaches spent in coaching make them become more confident in dealing with their athletes in terms of motivating, developing game strategies, correcting techniques, and instilling good characteristics.

Other than coaching education and coaching experience, academic qualification also serves as the predictor factor that can influence coaches’ coaching efficacy. Results showed that coaches who have higher academic qualification significantly influence their coaching efficacy. Despite general coaching experience, knowledge also served as a “unique source of efficacy information that deals mainly with the knowledge to prepare teams” [25]. Because it is strongly linked to the positive outcomes that humans value, academic qualification is one of the most important factors that should be taken seriously by coaches. Coaches with high levels of education and who are academically successful have stable employment, are more likely to be employed, have more employment opportunities than those with less education, and earn higher salaries. Furthermore, coaches with successful academic have lower levels of depression and anxiety, have higher self-esteem, are socially inclined, and are less likely to abuse alcohol and engage in substance abuse. Sports coaches have to be able to manage stress effectively and the capacity to focus and block out distractions by employing positive self-esteem and self-confidence.

Coaching efficacy is usually measured through four dimensions or subscales which are motivation, game strategy, technique, and character building efficacy. However, among these four subscales, current finding revealed that the team sport coaches have lowest level of technique efficacy. One possible reason that Malaysian SUKMA coaches who coached team sports had lowest mean scores of technique efficacy might be due to limited contact time between coaches and athletes. As indicated by Delano, communication is very important for the coaches to deliver correctly and precisely to the target athletes [26]. Therefore the lack of contact time between coaches and athletes may have hindered the efficacy of the coaches to deliver well on technical elements. In addition, most of the youth athletes involved in team sports came from schools where most of the time they were being supervised by their school coaches. The Malaysian SUKMA coaches were only able to be with their athletes during centralized training just before the event. Due to the short duration of centralized training, there is a limited contact between coaches and their athletes which resulted in limited time for coaches to improvise athlete’s skills and technique. Furthermore, the SUKMA event is organized only once every two years, which gives little opportunity of exposure for coaches to guide their athletes in real game situations [22, 24]. Therefore, coaches have to look for other methods to improve their technique efficacy. For example, coaches may have to organize more competitions or friendly matches in increasing their team performance so that they can practice using different methods in correcting and demonstrating the perfect skills and techniques. Using different approaches may be challenging for the coaches yet it is attainable and help to increase the efficacy in coaching [27]. Further research is paramount to expanding the understanding of coaching efficacy in this environment. However, this study has provided additional knowledge of coaching efficacy related to Malaysian youth team sport coaches.

Past studies had already noted that coaches who had high coaching efficacy used more positive coaching styles, had more players who were satisfied with their playing experiences, had higher winning percentages, and had higher efficacy levels among athletes and teams [5, 9]. Therefore, it would be interesting to examine these variables on Malaysian coaches to determine whether the outcomes were similar.

6 Conclusion

In conclusion, several sources or factors that can influence coaches’ coaching efficacy have been identified in this study. Coaches are able to refer to these findings in helping increasing future coaching efficacy. For example, by attending coaching seminars, reading coaching materials, and watching instructional videos, coaches can continue to develop and progress. In turn, organizer of coaching seminars can use this information to provide reputable coaches to share experiences and information for beginner coaches to enhance their coaching efficacy.

This study has successfully demonstrated that Malaysian SUKMA coaches have a high level of coaching efficacy to coach youth athletes. Their level of coaching efficacy was primarily determined by their playing experiences and coaching courses attended. Measuring coaching efficacy is important because it does not only provide a direct impact on coaching behavior, but also include both constructive and destructive influences that impact on the development as well as performance of individuals and teams. This study has provided a foundation to building a body of knowledge on coaching efficacy that is related specifically to the Malaysian environment.

Coaches are important individuals linking the relationship between the athlete and their sports performance. Hence, it is paramount to understand the factors that influence coaches’ efficacy. When carrying out research or setting up interventions, the capability of coaches to enhance learning and performance of his or her athletes must be taken into account [25]. Under the guidance of efficacious coaches, young athletes can acquire the technical and tactical skills of a sport and confidence in their physical abilities, develop leadership qualities, and work toward achieving their goal.

In addition, it is recommended that future research should continue to identify the sources and other factors that influence coaching efficacy particularly in the aspect of coaches’ self-development since there is inconsistency in findings reported.