The purpose of this study was to determine if team cohesion could be enhanced
for 9th grade female basketball teams with the implementation of a 14-week
intervention program. The intervention program was designed from cohesion
building strategies proposed in the literature with the help of three coaches and a
leading sport psychologist in the field of cohesion. 41 ninth grade female
basketball players belonging to four teams participated in the study. The Group
Environment Questionnaire was used to measure cohesion. It was administered
on the third week of the season and again at the end. The data were analyzed
using both the individual and the team as the unit of analysis. The findings
varied according to which unit of analysis was used. When the team was used,
no posttest differences were found, however, the effect sizes suggested that the
intervention was effective for the task subscales of the GEQ. A lack of
statistical power for the team analysis greatly reduced the probability of finding
that the meaningful differences were statistically significant. When the
individual was used, the intervention was found to be statistically detrimental
for the task subscales. The effect sizes supported this finding. The qualitative
data that was collected suggested that the coaches believed the intervention had
practical utility, and was effective. While this study did not empirically show
that the intervention was effective, it did demonstrate that the intervention is
practical enough to implement. Furthermore, the qualitative data and the effect
sizes for the team analysis provide some evidence that the intervention may have
been effective for the task dimension of team cohesion. Therefore this study
produced an intervention that can be used as a starting point for future cohesion
building investigations. / Graduation date: 1997
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/34493 |
| Date | 25 July 1996 |
| Creators | Smith, Joseph W. |
| Contributors | Ebbeck, Vicki |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds