Examination of youth athletes' team cohesion and collective efficacy beliefs

The purpose of this research was to examine team cohesion and collective efficacy beliefs in a sample of youth athletes. Participants were 180 male (age: 15.41±1.15) and 70 female (age: 14.70±1.09), 250 athletes in total (age: 15.10±1.16) who involved youth academies for team sports (basketball, volleyball and soccer). Collective Efficacy Scale and Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire was used to assess athletes' collective efficacy beliefs and perceptions of team cohesiveness. The Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire consists of 18 items in two factors that are scored on a 9-point Likert scale, 2 of which were negatively worded in order to detect invalidating response sets. The Turkish adaptation of the Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire was carried out, validity and reliability studies conducted by the researcher. Internal consistency scores (Cronbach Coefficient Alpha) were computed as .72 for the Collective Efficacy Scale, .89 for the Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire, .87 for both social cohesion and task cohesion subscales, respectively. Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, item-total correlation analysis, T-test, one way MANOVA, one way ANOVA and correlation analysis were used to analyze the research data. As for the results of the study, there were significant differences on both task and social subscales of team cohesion in terms of the gender of participants (p<.05), but no differences were found on collective efficacy beliefs. It was also observed that team cohesion and collective efficacy beliefs do not differ in terms of the team tenure (p>.05). Finally, there were negative and significant correlations between the factors of team cohesion and collective efficacy beliefs. According to this finding, a higher level of team cohesion weakens collective efficacy beliefs. Discussion focused on several factors that might affect the negative relationship between team cohesion and collective efficacy in youth sport.