The Influence of Perception on Student-Athletes’ Motivation and Relationship with Coaches — Student-Athlete’s Perception

The present study was created to better understand the influence of coaches on student-athlete’s motivation. The goal of this study was to determine how the student-athlete’s motivation level is affected by the type of relationship between the coach and the student-athlete in comparison to non-athletes. The hypothesis is that athelete status (student-athlete or non-athlete) impacts perceived motivation when faced with a particular coach (“supportive” or “non-supportive”). The approach was to conduct a two-group experiment providing participants with two different scenarios. One of two scenarios was presented to manipulate the perception of a coach. Forty participants participated in this study. The recruited participants were either student- athletes or non-athletes. All participants were recruited from a Historically Black Institution; 58% were male, 42% female. The results indicate that the type of coach will differently impact a student-athlete’s motivation than a non-athlete. More specifically, both student-athletes and non-athletes perceive a “supportive” coach to be more supportive; however student-athletes perceive “non-supportive” coaches to be less encouraging than non-athletes. The findings from this study suggest that student-athletes and non- athletes perceive a non-supportive coach differently.