Preliminary Development Of The "Benevolence And Authority" Leadership Perception Scale For Coaches In Guangdong Province

Background:The leadership style of coaches plays a crucial role in enhancing athletes’ abilities.However,there is currently a lack of measurement tools for coaching leadership styles that are suitable for the Chinese cultural context.Objective:This thesis aims to develop and validate a scale based on the concept of"benevolence and authority" in the Chinese cultural context,by integrating philosophical thoughts from ancient China and localized management psychology theories.The thesis consists of two study:Study 1 involves the development of the"Benevolence and Authority Leadership Perception Scale for Coaches in Guangdong Province," while Study 2 focuses on examining the reliability and validity of the scale.Methods:In Study 1,an item pool for the scale was generated through literature analysis and expert discussions.A total of 148 athletes from provincial sports teams in Guangdong Province participated in the survey.Item selection was conducted using item-total correlations,item analysis,and exploratory factor analysis to form the final scale.In Study 2,460 athletes from provincial sports teams in Guangdong Province completed the scale,and its reliability and validity were examined through confirmatory factor analysis,discriminant validity analysis,and internal consistency reliability analysis.Results:In Study 1,the findings revealed that 1)item-total correlations ranged from 0.65 to 0.82;2)item analysis showed significant differences between high and low score groups for each item,with factor loadings above 0.45 and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients above 0.80;3)exploratory factor analysis yielded three factors(benevolence-individual care,benevolence-tolerance,authority)with no cross-factor loadings,high factor loadings,and average explained variance.In Study 2,the results indicated that 1)the confirmatory factor analysis showed acceptable model fit indices:RMSEA=0.10,CFI=0.91,TLI=0.90,PNFI=0.69;2)discriminant validity analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between the benevolence factor and the perceived autonomy support and subjective vitality scales(r=0.76,r=0.46),while a weak positive correlation was observed between the authority factor and these scales(r=0.14,r=0.17);3)reliability analysis demonstrated high Cronbach’s alpha coefficients(>0.80)for all factors.Conclusion:This study has developed a preliminary version of the "Benevolence and Authority Leadership Perception Scale for Coaches in Guangdong Province"comprising 11 items.The scale demonstrates good reliability and validity and can serve as an effective measurement tool for assessing coaches’ benevolence and authority leadership behaviors.Further promotion and utilization of this scale are warranted.