Team Member Communication and Perceived Cohesion in Youth Soccer

Abstract

Although it is assumed that athletes need to consider the member-to-member interactions that take place within a team before drawing an accurate perception about the team’s level of cohesion, little research to date has addressed this assumption. The purpose of this study was to examine the intrateam communication and cohesion relationship to determine which types of communication would be associated with perceived task and social cohesiveness in a sample of youth athletes. Youth soccer players ( N = 139, k = 13) completed measures of intrateam communication and task and social cohesion halfway through a competitive season. Separate multilevel analyses were run predicting task and social cohesion. For task cohesion, acceptance, positive conflict, and negative conflict communication emerged as significant predictors, p < .001, accounting for 40% of the total variance. For social cohesion, distinctiveness, positive conflict, and negative conflict communication were significant predictors, p < .001, accounting for 27% of the total variance. Findings provide initial evidence establishing a link between intrateam communication and cohesion in the youth sport context but more importantly suggest both similarities and differences with respect to the specific types of intrateam communication that are associated with task and social cohesion.

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