The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the Technique and Games approaches on girls' soccer performance and motivation. The Technique approach focuses on technique instruction using drills, whereas the Games approach places emphasis on tactic instruction with modified games. 37 girls, 12 to 13 years old, were taught 15 soccer lessons by the Technique approach and 35 girls by the Games approach. At the beginning and at the end of the research soccer matches were videotaped and evaluated by Oslin, Mitchell, and Griffin's Game Performance Assessment Instrument. Girls' motivation was assessed on the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. The Games group had significantly better scores after training on tactical behaviour and intrinsic motivation than the Technique group. There were no significant differences in skill execution between groups trained under the two approaches. Considering the importance of intrinsic motivation for a lifelong, physically active lifestyle, researchers could focus study on the approaches and girls' motivation.
Empathy is simply explained as a social/communication skill of paying attention on other peoples' needs by understanding their feelings. It is well argued that staffs' empathy represents one of the five main dimensions of service quality. Results of the literature review have shown that empathy is more or less underestimated in the services research and in some service areas it is regarded as the least important component among tangibles, reliability, assurance and responsibility. This paper discusses the role of empathic behavior as requirement in sport tourism services, i.e. serving top athletes or teams or dealing with recreational sports tourists. Researchers have developed several methods for training towards a more empathic behavior. Therefore, managers of sport tourism organizations, centers and hotels offering sports may focus on staffs' empathy in order to achieve advanced quality and retain customers.
The aim of the study was to investigate job satisfaction and job commitment of coaches of the three major racket sports in Greece: tennis, table-tennis and badminton. One hundred and ten (N = 110) tennis (N T = 61), table-tennis (N TT = 31) and badminton (N B = 18) coaches responded to the Coach Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ), an eleven-factor instrument which assesses coaches' job satisfaction and to the Occupational-Organizational Commitment Scale, a six factor questionnaire which evaluates the different forms of occupational and organizational commitment. Forty six of the coaches were full-time (N FT = 46) whereas of the rest, sixty four were part-time (N PT = 64). The results of a series of t-tests, ANOVAs and correlation analyses revealed various significant differences and relationships. Some of the most important are that: a) tennis coaches and full-time coaches were more satisfied in most of the job satisfaction dimensions, b) significant correlations were noticed between "job satisfaction" and "organizational commitment" variables, c) "autonomy", was a predictor of "organizational affective commitment", d) "satisfaction with coaching job" was the unique predictor of occupational affective and "occupational normative commitment" and e) "team performance" was the only predictor of "occupational continuance commitment". Most of the results are in accordance with the existing job satisfaction literature however, further research is needed on human relation practices of National Federations and/or sport clubs associated with them, in order to have a better understanding of how certain practices and policies lead to higher levels of job satisfaction, organizational and occupational commitment among racket sport coaches.
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