An investigation of basic needs satisfaction as a mediator of the associations between coach autonomy support and participant's life skills development in sport

Past self-determination theory-based studies in English-speaking countries have investigated life skills development in youth sport. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of basic needs satisfaction in mediating the potential associations between coach autonomy support and participant's life skills development in Brazilian youth sport. A total of 817 participants (572 boys, 245 girls, Mage = 14.10, SD = 1.37) took part in the study. These participants completed measures assessing their perceptions of coach autonomy support, basic need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction), and life skill development (teamwork, goal setting, interpersonal communication, problem solving and decision making, time management, emotional skills, leadership, and social skills). Mediation analyses revealed that satisfaction of the three basic needs combined (i.e., total need satisfaction) and autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction individually mediated the positive associations between coach autonomy support and participant's total life skills development (i.e., all eight life skills combined). In practice, these findings indicate that when trying to promote participant's total life skills development through sport, coaches should seek to satisfy participant's three basic psychological needs by displaying autonomy-supportive behaviors.