ABSTRACT
Home advantage in sports has been extensively researched in the academic literature over the past five decades. A review of the literature reveals several factors that consistently underly this phenomenon. One of the most documented is the home crowd effect. While the crowd effect on the results has been widely researched considering noise, size, and density, there are conflicting findings of the effect and its extent. Furthermore, the perceptions of fans, athletes, coaches, and officials of the causes of home advantage in general and the crowd effect in particular, remain marginal. This is especially important in the face of significant regulation changes in the stands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study, therefore, examined the perceptions of fans, athletes, coaches, and officials of the Israeli handball premier league regarding fans' contribution to the home advantage phenomenon along with other factors (e.g., travel and officiating). A questionnaire examining perceptions regarding home advantage was distributed to 232 Israeli participants (117 fans, 59 players, 26 coaches, and 30 officials). Results, based on MANOVA, ANOVA, and post-hoc analyses, indicated significant differences in participants' perceptions of the different factors in general and the crowd factor in particular. Overall, the crowd was perceived as the most important factor contributing to the home advantage phenomenon (M = 5.7). Furthermore, fans perceived their contribution (i.e., the crowd) significantly higher than the rest of the participants (p = 0.001; i.e., players, coaches, and officials). On the other hand, officials ranked their contribution to the home advantage effect as low as well as significantly under ranked their contribution in comparison to the other groups (p < 0.001). This result suggests that officials perceive themselves as relatively robust to the crowd effect compared to the other participants. Additional results are discussed in light of existing gaps in the literature on the home advantage phenomenon. Alongside the theoretical contribution, these findings contribute to applied implications of increasing the home advantage effect when playing at home and negating the home advantage when playing away.
ABSTRACT
Objective performance measures are vastly used in sport psychology despite their inherent limitations (e.g., unaccounted baseline differences). Founded on the nature of group goals in team sports, we aimed at developing the Perceived Performance in Team Sports Questionnaire (PPTSQ) to capture the team members' perception of their team's performance. Accordingly, three dimensions were hypothesized: effort investment, skills execution, and perceived outcome. To measure these dimensions, items were generated to address the players' perception of their team performance as a whole. Four samples of athletes were used to test the psychometric properties of the PPTSQ: professional (n = 231), collegiate (n = 222), professional-retest (n = 89), and mixed professional-collegiate (n = 139). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to estimate construct and content validities. These procedures revealed a better data fit to a two-dimensional model that consists of effort investment and perceived outcome. The reliability analyses for the PPTSQ provide satisfactory evidence that the questionnaire is a reliable measure of perceived performance in team sport. Adequate internal consistency emerged for both dimensions (0.75 < ω < 0.89). Furthermore, a high correlation was obtained for temporal stability. Concurrent validity was addressed by correlating the PPTSQ scores with the Group Environment Questionnaire and the Team Assessment Diagnostic Instrument. Correlational analysis between the PPTSQ and an objective measure of performance was used to test its predictive validity. The correlations strongly support the concurrent and predictive validities of the PPTSQ. We conclude that our perceived performance questionnaire can address various objective measures shortcomings (e.g., considering base-rate biases) resulting in a more meaningful team performance metric. Implication of the PPTSQ for sport psychology research and applied work enhancement are discussed in detail.
ABSTRACT
A social networking Web site, Facebook, was used to deliver long-term sport psychology consultation services to student-athletes (i.e., soccer players) in 30- to 60-min weekly sessions. Additional short-term team building, group cohesion, communication, anger management, injury rehabilitation, mental toughness, commitment, and leadership workshops were provided. Cohesion and overall relationships between both the student-athletes and the sport psychology consultants benefited from this process. Social networking Web sites offer a practical way of providing sport psychology consulting services that does not require use of major resources.
