Abstract

Summary
Among the three important and influential factors involved in the success of sports teams (i.e. athlete, coach, and spectator), the coach in the role of team leader, as a strong organizer and the basis of any progress, is considered. One of the basic issues in sports is the observance of the ethical principles and having professional ethics by sports coaches as the leaders of the athletes in the sports fields. The aim of this work is to investigate the relationship between the professional ethics of sports coaches and self-efficacy with respect to the mediating role of competence.
Introduction
Today, coaching, as one of the most difficult jobs in the world, requires extraordinary skills and knowledge in order to train the skilled athletes. One of the reasons for the adjective problem in this profession is that the result of the work of coaches is exposed to the careful and meticulous look of spectators, players, sports managers, journalists, and critics of society (Vogt and Klein, 2020). In this regard, the sports coaches should have the necessary competencies along with appropriate professional ethics for a greater effectiveness and self-efficacy, which have been considered in this work. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the relationship between the professional ethics and the coaching self-efficacy with regard to the mediating role of competence of sports coaches in the Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province in Iran.
Methodology and Approach
The present work was an applied and correlational one. It was conducted in 118 football and futsal coaches in the Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province in Iran who had a coaching certificate and were active in various competitions in the province in 1397. The studied sample size was selected to be equal to the population. In total, 111 coaches (94%) completed the questionnaires. The data was collected using the coach competence questionnaire of Montazeri et al. (2018), professional ethics questionnaire of Eidi et al. (2016), and coaching efficiency questionnaire of Myers et al. (2008), and the validity and reliability were confirmed. The data analysis was performed by the partial least squares method, which included evaluation of measurement models (Cronbach's alpha, combined reliability, convergent and divergent validity), structural model fitting (factor load coefficients, significance of path coefficients and determination coefficient, and model forecast index. The SPSS software (version 16) and Smart PLS software (version 2) were used in order to analyze the data.
Results and Conclusion
The results obtained showed that the research work proposed a model that had a good fit. There is a direct and significant relationship between the professional ethics and the self-efficacy of sports coaches. Furthermore, 20.2% of the effect of professional ethics on coaching self-efficacy was indirectly explained by the mediating variable of the coaches' competence. Based on the findings of this work, it can be concluded that the sports coaches’ professional ethics leads to the development of their self-efficacy by increasing their competency. The sport authorities in the Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province in Iran should pay special attention to institutionalizing the professional ethics in order to increase the self-efficacy of the sports coaches.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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