Accessing the Coach Leadership Style among Athletes in the Malaysian Secondary School

Abstract

According to the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (2010), the term "sport" encompasses any form of physical activity that, through consistent or leisurely engagement, seeks to enhance both physical and mental wellbeing, foster social connections, or achieve competitive outcomes across all levels. One of the important factors for achieving success in sports is the feeling of winning something competitive (Duda, 1989). According to the Multidimensional Theory by Chelladurai and Saleh (1980), team success is the result of the compatibility between the actual behaviour and the behaviours favoured by athletes. The descriptive method was used in this research. The instrument used in this study is the Leadership Scale for Sports questionnaire Chelladurai & Salleh (1980) which consists of 40 questions on a Likert scale to test 5 dimensions of the coach's leadership style. Furthermore, this research aims to investigate what is the most preferred and the actual leadership style of secondary school athletes in Malaysia, specifically in Subis District. The study indicates that the most favourable leadership style is training and instruction with mean score 4.29 and std. deviation .61 Followed by democratic leadership behaviour with mean score 4.06 and std. deviation .64. The third and the fourth places go to positive feedback behaviour with mean score 3.82 and std. deviation .70, and social support behaviour with mean 3.67 and std. deviation .61. The most unfavourable style of leadership is autocratic types of behaviour with mean 1.85, std deviation .82. The researchers also found no significant difference between the preferred and actual leadership styles of Malaysian secondary school athletes.