Comparing Collegiate Coaches’ and Players’ Perceptions of the Coaches’ Multicultural Competence

The coaching effectiveness model developed by Horn (2008) describes cultural context as a backdrop that forms beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors displayed by sport coaches. Sue et al.’s (1992) multicultural competencies model stresses the value of awareness, knowledge, and skills used in all service fields to strengthen cross-cultural relationships. Therefore, multicultural competence has been identified from these models as a critical component of effective sport coaching. Despite the growing importance of multicultural competencies expressed by, and for, sport coaches (Mesquita et al., 2011; Santos et al., 2010), there remains limited understanding of how coaches obtain and apply multiculturally competent behaviors and skills into their practice and how these behaviors are perceived by their athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to (1) highlight the importance of multicultural competence in the area of sport coaching and (2) contribute to the lack of multicultural competence research in sport coaching by considering athletes’ perceptions as well as coaches’ perceptions of coaches’ multicultural competence. To do this, the researcher of this study utilized a quantitative survey design to compare athletes’ and coaches’ perceptions of the coaches’ multicultural competence from 19 college teams to determine if coaches rated themselves differently than the athletes perceived their coach to be. Results indicated that collegiate sport coaches rated themselves significantly lower than their athletes rated them. In addition, the results revealed that coaches rated themselves lowest in terms of their ability to coach transgender athletes. Future work is needed to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of training interventions to help coaches become more multiculturally competent