This study examined the effectiveness of a longitudinal 5C coaching intervention
(Harwood, 2008), focused on promoting behavioral responses associated with
commitment, communication, concentration, control, and confidence in youth soccer
players. Five players, their parents and a youth academy soccer coach participated in a
single-case multiple-baseline across individuals design with multiple treatments.
Following baseline, the coach received sequential education in the principles of each ‘C’ subsequent to integrating relevant strategies in their coaching sessions. During the five intervention phases, players completed assessments of their behavior in training associated with each C, triangulated with observation-based assessments by the coach and the players’ parents. Results indicated psychosocial improvements with
cumulative increases in positive psychosocial responses across the intervention for
selected players. Changes in player behavior were also corroborated by parent and
coach data in conjunction with post-intervention social validation. Findings are
discussed with respect to the processes engaged in the intervention, and the
implications for practitioners and applied researchers.
History
School
Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
The Sport Psychologist
Citation
HARWOOD, C.G., BARKER, J. and ANDERSON, R., 2015. Psychosocial development in youth soccer players: assessing the effectiveness of the 5C’s intervention program. The Sport Psychologist 29(4), pp.319-334.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2015
Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal The Sport Psychologist and the definitive published version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/tsp.2014-0161