Measuring coach onboarding strategy and university athlete performance: A scale development study

Abstract

University athletes have a limited time (usually four years) of eligibility to perform for their institutions. The dynamic nature of university athletics in the United States results in a continuous influx of newcomers to the various teams. Furthermore, athletes with diverse cultural backgrounds have to adapt to the team culture to be able to perform at their highest level. Considering that, the integration of new athletes is a process that happens on a large scale at the beginning of every season and can have an impact on their performance throughout the season and beyond. Delineating the tactics coaches employ to facilitate this process warrants considerable attention. In this study, the authors focused on the onboarding process of newcomer university athletes who have a significant difference between their culture and the team culture. The authors paid special attention to the university athlete's perception of the ability of their coach to structure the onboarding process. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure athlete perceptions of tactics used by their coach during the onboarding process of newcomers into university athletics, based on Churchill (1979) and DeVellis’ (2016) scale development procedures.