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Confidence is a well-known psychological quality that is relevant for performing at one's best. Previous literature examined sources from which athletes derive their confidence, what behaviors coaches perceive to be the most effective at building confidence, and the level of congruence between athletes' and coaches' perceptions on confidence-building techniques. However, research has rarely asked athletes what they believe are the most important behaviors coaches can do to build confidence in both individuals and teams. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore athletes' perceptions of what coaches can do to build confidence from the perspective of athletes. Collegiate student-athletes (n = 264) completed two open-ended questions regarding specific behaviors that coaches do to build confidence in athletes and teams. A total of 649 interpretable meaning units were analyzed into 13 lower-order themes and 5 higher-order categories. Results revealed that creating a nurturing positive environment, responding to athletes productively, developing effective practices for training, developing interpersonal relationships with athletes, and possessing effective intrapersonal qualities themselves are all behaviors identified as important for building confidence. Many of the behaviors were common to building confidence in both athletes and teams, though there were confidence-building behaviors unique to either group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the antecedents of athletes' reliance on Vealey's nine sources of confidence. Achievement goal-orientation, perfectionism, coach-induced motivational climates were examined as predictors. Sources of confidence were categorized into controllable (e.g. mastery) and uncontrollable (e.g. situational favorableness) sources of confidence. Past research indicated that controllable sources of confidence are critical for enduring levels of confidence. Participants in the present study included 206 intercollegiate athletes. Path analysis showed that adaptive perfectionism positively predicted both controllable and uncontrollable sources of confidence, whereas maladaptive perfectionism positively only predicted uncontrollable sources of confidence. Ego-goal orientation and ego-involving motivational climate were not significant predictors; however, task-goal orientation and task-involving motivational climate were positive predictors of both categories of sources. Results implicate that nurturing adaptive perfectionistic characteristics, task-goal orientation, and task-involving motivational climate would be critical to athletes' selection of controllable sources of confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]