Ties That Bond: Youth Sport as a Vehicle for Social Identity and Positive Youth Development.

An emerging area of research has focused on understanding how the group dynamics of a sport team influence positive youth development (PYD). The identities that youth form through their membership in sport teams (i.e., social identities) have been found to influence teammate behavior and team performance. Yet, minimal work exists on social identity and PYD in youth sport. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social identity and PYD in sport. METHOD: Youth engaged in recreational sport (N = 219; Mage = 11.61 years, SD = 1.39 years) completed measures of social identity and PYD in sport. The social identity measure assessed 3 dimensions including ingroup ties (IGT; perceptions of similarity, bonding, belongingness), cognitive centrality (importance of being a team member), and ingroup affect (IGA; feelings associated with group membership). A regression analysis was performed separately for 4 PYD outcomes (personal and social skills, goal setting, initiative, negative experiences) with the 3 dimensions of social identity entered as predictors. RESULTS: Regression analyses revealed that IGT and IGA were positively associated with personal and social skills (R2 Adj. = .29). Further, IGT predicted initiative (R2 Adj. = .16), whereas IGA was positively associated with goal setting (R2 Adj. = .17) and negatively associated with negative experiences (R2 Adj. = .08). CONCLUSION: The findings extend previous research highlighting the benefits of social identity on teammate behavior and team performance and demonstrate how social identity may contribute to PYD through sport.

Coach development programmes to improve interpersonal coach behaviours: a systematic review using the re-aim framework.

OBJECTIVE: Although evidence supports the effectiveness of interpersonal Coach Development Programmes (CDPs), which are designed to foster coach-athlete relationships, an intervention's impact is shaped by numerous factors over and above effectiveness. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the extent that published articles describing interpersonal CDP trials reported on indicators of internal and external validity, as conceptualised in the RE-AIM framework (ie, Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance). METHODS: The search strategy was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines, involving a database search and supplemental manual search of key articles and journals. After initial screening, the full-text search strategy involved identifying articles describing CDP trials and then selecting a specific subgroup of articles involving interpersonal CDP trials and excluding ineligible articles. Resulting trials were coded using a 47-item sport coaching adaptation of the RE-AIM coding sheet. RESULTS: 17 published articles met eligibility criteria, representing 10 distinct CDP trials. After attaining coder agreement, global ratings of RE-AIM indicators within interpersonal CDP trials ranged from the low to moderate quality. Whereas indicators of effectiveness and implementation were reported to some extent across all studies, maintenance within sport organisations and a number of specific indicators from across dimensions were rarely reported. CONCLUSIONS: These findings inform the future design and evaluation of CDPs that have the potential to be adopted in numerous settings and reach athletes and coaches who can most benefit.