Are coaches' health promotion activities beneficial for sport participants? A multilevel analysis

Objectives: As major actors in sports activities, sports coaches can play a significant role in health education and contribute to the psychological well-being of young people. However, not all participants in sports activities experience sports positively, which reduces the potential benefits for health. The present study investigates if coaches' efforts to promote health increase young athletes' enjoyment, self-esteem and perceived health in daily life and decrease sport dropout.

Design: To control for the variability between teams and between clubs, multilevel modeling was applied.

Methods: A sample of 342 young football players completed questionnaires assessing their perceptions of coaches' Health Promotion (HP) activities, enjoyment of sports, dropout intentions, self-esteem and perceived health in daily life.

Results: HP general score was positively related to enjoyment and perceived health as well as negatively dropout intentions. Players perceiving their coaches as promoting fair and play (Respect for oneself and others) scored higher on their perceptions of enjoyment in sport, self-esteem and self-reported health, and lower on dropout intentions. Moreover, players recognizing their coaches as encouraging their healthy lifestyle also reported higher perceptions of sport enjoyment, whereas player's perceived coaches' activities on substance use were associated with lower participants' enjoyment.

Conclusions: These results support the importance of developing HP in sports clubs. Especially, promoting respect of oneself and others seems to be the more beneficial to sport participants.