Coaches’ Needs Satisfaction, Psychological Needs Thwarting and Motivation in Coaching

The purpose of the study was to examine the basic needs satisfaction, psychological need thwarting and motivation among coaches in Sarawak, Malaysia. The participants were 251 coaches (194 male and 57 female) aged 18–57 years old (2.26 ± .93) whose coaching ranged from school to national level. The Basic Need Satisfaction at Work Scale for Coaches (BNSWSC), Psychological Need Thwarting Scale (PNTS) and Coach Motivation Questionnaire (CMQ) were used. Descriptive analysis, independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and two-way ANOVA were utilized. The independent-samples t-test revealed significant difference between gender for relatedness, t = 2.37, p = 0.019. Besides, the one-way ANOVA revealed significant difference between age groups for intrinsic, p = 0.013. The one-way ANOVA also revealed significant difference between ethnicities for a motivation, p = 0.009. Two-way ANOVA revealed the main effect of gender was significant for relatedness, p = 0.03. Whereas, two-way ANOVA revealed the main effect of coaching level was significant for competence, p = 0.034, intrinsic motivation, p = 0.01, integrated regulation, p = 0.001, and identified regulation, p = 0.005. There was significant interaction between Gender × Coaching Level for competence, p = 0.041, relatedness, p = 0.006, intrinsic motivation, p = 0.021, and integrated regulation, p = 0.038. The findings provide deeper insight into the motivational underlying mechanism in coaching with effective strategies to satisfy the psychological needs of the coaches through strengthening of the environmental factors which can facilitate, support and sustain the coaching platform.