Attachment theory as a framework to understand youth sport coaches' caring behaviours within the coach-youth athlete relationship

This programme of research set out to explore attachment theory as a framework for understanding the affective behaviours of youth sports coaches within the coach-youth athlete relationship. It sought to do this through a set of three linked studies located within the paradigmatic domain of critical realism. Study 1 contextualised the research by exploring the vista of the attachment orientations of the competitive and elite youth coaching community. This was achieved through the use of the Experience in Close Relationships – Relationship Structure questionnaire (ECR-RS), which determined the coaches’ attachment orientations. Findings demonstrated that almost half of the coaches have the potential to struggle with their emotional regulation under stress. Study 2 built on the contextualising work of study 1 by exploring the narratives of attachment amongst youth sport coaches, in order to understand their impact on the coach-youth athlete relationship. The study adopted a qualitative approach, using story completion as a method of data collection, then examined through dialogical narrative analysis. The study used a comparative approach designed to generate two sets of stories through two differing attachment trigger events. The findings suggest that attachment orientation does play a role in presentation of affective care within the coach-youth athlete relationship but that socio-cultural narratives have the power to not only mute these antecedent behaviours, but promote alternative behaviours in their place. Following on from these findings, Study 3 developed an 8-week intervention aimed at exploring the potential to enhance a coach’s secure-base attachment behaviour (a part of the attachment system that promotes affective behaviour) through supraliminal secure-base priming. Data was collected through semi-structed interviews and analysed using realist thematic analysis. The findings highlight the influence that the attachment orientation has on a participant’s receptiveness to any potential modification to that orientation. While securely attached individuals are receptive to the priming process and so demonstrate an enhancement in their feelings of care, the insecure-avoidantly attached are subject to the emotionally defensive nature of their orientation, which avoids emotional engagement, reducing their receptiveness to the priming process. This research demonstrates that there is real utility in the application of attachment theory to the study the of coach-youth athlete relationship and in its potential to help understand how to enhance the quality of those relationships.