Role Commitment and Acceptance in a Sport Context

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to (a) develop a conceptualization of role acceptance, later situated within the broader concept of role commitment, pertinent to the sport environment; (b) develop a measure integrating direct perceptions of role commitment and the bases of this variable; and (c) determine if role commitment could predict athletes’ intentions to return. To accomplish these objectives, multiple methods were used across 4 projects that leveraged the extant literature on acceptance and commitment perceptions from sport and organizational psychology, engaged athletes in focus groups in a think-aloud protocol, and obtained responses on iterative versions of a new role-commitment questionnaire from over 700 athletes from a variety of competitive and developmental levels. Overall, this approach captured the bases of role commitment (affective, normative, and continuance perspectives), as well as direct perceptions of role commitment, and demonstrated an important link to intentions to return to sport.

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

“…Another notable limitation was that cohesion was only examined as an antecedent of role commitment despite suggestions that the relationship may be reciprocal in nature (Bray et al, 2002; Carron & Eys, 2012; Eys et al, 2020). In particular, two qualitative studies exploring role perceptions in the team sport environment suggested that cohesion and commitment to role responsibilities may be have a reciprocal relationship (Benson et al, 2013; Holt & Sparks, 2001).…”

“…In Study 1, we sought to determine if cohesion perceptions could predict the bases of role commitment and, in turn, if the bases were related to direct perceptions of role commitment over two time points in a Canadian youth sport sample. Study 2 examined the same theoretical path as Study 1 over two time points (cohesion predicting the bases of role commitment and, subsequently, the bases relating to direct perceptions of role commitment) with the addition of examining whether direct perceptions of role commitment were further associated with intentions to return to sport (Eys et al, 2020) ). The competition level of the teams ranged from the first tier division to the third tier division of regional-level competition.…”

“…"; α = .92, ω = .90) measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from −3 (not at all committed to my role) to +3 (completely committed to my role). For an indepth explanation of the development and validation of the RCS, 2 please see Eys et al (2020).…”

“…In particular, Eys and colleagues proposed ability and availability/opportunity as two moderating variables that could influence the role commitment-role performance relationship. Ability is one's competency to execute their 1 Although much of the early research on role commitment uses the term role acceptance (Benson et al, 2013), recent work by Eys et al (2020) highlights the conceptual overlap of role commitment and role acceptance (see Eys et al, 2020 for details). In agreement with the conceptualization proposed by Eys and colleagues, we adopt this stance and refer to role commitment to maintain consistency in this emerging research area.…”

“…In their initial examination of role commitment, Eys et al (2020) found that affective, normative, and continuance bases were correlated with direct role commitment perceptions. However, further examination demonstrated that affective perceptions explained the majority of the variance for role commitment.…”