Perception of and coping with organizational and media stress in elite sport: does the coach matter?

Grounded within the motivational framework of Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) and the transactional stress perspective, the purpose of the present dissertation was to investigate how elite athletes perceive and cope with organizational and media stressors. The evidence from all six papers supports the usefulness of the transactional stress perspective to study stress perceived by elite athletes’. Categories of organizational stressors (core categories such as coach and team issues and also cultural peculiarities) and media stress (positive and negative coverage as well as the journalists) were perceived as stressful in the 6 papers. Use of coping strategies such as coach support, social support, problem-focused strategies, and avoidance coping were used by participants to cope with both organizational and media stressors. Data analysis revealed further evidence that elite athletes’ perceptions of stress may be influenced by the motivational climate created by the coach; hence, creating and maintaining mastery oriented climates can reduce stress as an adaptive coping strategy