Groupness, cohesion, and intention to return to sport: A study of intact youth teams

Abstract

The positive benefits for youth participating in sport have been well documented. Yet, keeping athletes returning to sport has been a concern. While various factors have been examined to explain this attrition, facets of the sport group experience have started to emerge. From a group perspective, it has been established that athlete intentions to return to a sport team the following season are positively associated with perceived team cohesion. While cohesion is a key group construct, other group factors are worthy of examination. The purpose of the current study was to build upon the research base by examining whether the relationship between cohesion and intention to return would be moderated by another group factor-the level of groupness ascribed to the team. At the end of a competitive season, youth soccer athletes (N ¼ 156) completed measures of task cohesion, groupness, and intention to return to their team in the future. Results revealed that the task cohesion-intention to return relationship was significantly moderated by groupness, p ¼ .03. Simple slopes analysis revealed that the strongest relationship between task cohesion and intention to return occurred under conditions of lower groupness. These initial results indicated that intention to return was highest when the team was perceived as higher in task cohesion, regardless of groupness perceptions. However, when the team was perceived to be lower in task cohesion, those who perceived their team as being more like a group indicated a greater willingness to return to the team in the future.

Disentangling the effects of ego and task-involving climate perceptions on cohesion in youth sport.

“…Adapting the questionnaire into Portuguese required certain contextual modifications to the original to ensure that the translation had the highest possible item comprehension for the sample of 12–19 years old Portuguese athletes. From a descriptive standpoint, athletes reported high average levels of cohesion, with slightly higher task than social cohesion perceptions, which aligns with other youth sport studies that have employed the YSEQ (McLaren et al, 2015, 2017; McLaren & Spink, 2016; Spink et al, 2018; Taylor & Bruner, 2012). The reliability and validity results support the YSEQ on psychometric and construct validity grounds.…”

Do it for the team: Youth perceptions of cohesion and role commitment in interdependent sport.

“…The results from Study 2 also demonstrated that role commitment was positively correlated with intentions to return to sport in a non-Canadian context, which may have implications for researchers concerned with prolonged sport participation. Declines in adherence rates in youth sport has been an item of concern for researchers and practitioners (Spink et al, 2018; ParticipACTION, 2018). As a result, many have examined group-related perceptions in relation to adherence perceptions.…”

Groupness perceptions and basic need satisfaction: Perceptions of fitness groups and experiences within club environments.

“…Researchers employing an earlier five-item unidimensional measure of groupness reported a positive association between groupness and physical activity behavior (Spink et al, 2010). Youth sport researchers employing the same tool in experimental and correlational studies also revealed an interaction between sport team cohesion and groupness: Athletes reported increased intentions to return to highly cohesive teams, but primarily when those teams were ascribed high groupness (Spink, McLaren, & Ulvick, 2018; Spink, Ulvick, McLaren, Crozier, & Fesser, 2015).…”