Author(s): SHI, Y., LEUNG, K.M., CHI, L., DUDA, J.L., Institution: THE EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, Country: HONG KONG, Abstract-ID: 1852

Introduction
Coach-created motivational climates are assumed to hold significant impact on young players’ sustained engagement in sport as well as their well-being and enjoyment of sport activities. It has been suggested that sport participation can promote youth participants’ character development and thus contribute to their future lives in adulthood. To date, some works have been done on assessing features of the coach-created motivational climates through the theoretical lens of empowering coaching theory and in regard to indices of prosocial/character development, particularly in non-Western regions. Guided by the theoretically-integrated Empowering Coaching conceptual framework, this study aimed to assess the relationships of empowering and disempowering motivational climates to indices of youth participants’ sport character, including confidence, leadership, resilience, mental toughness, and social inclusion.
Methods
651 participants were 12 to 15 years old male and female students who attended sport training offered by five partnered sport associations in Hong Kong. They responded to scales which were translated into Mandarin for Cantonese speakers from the Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire-Coach (EDMCQ-C), Self-Description Questionnaire II (SDQ II), Youth Experience Survey 2.0 (YES 2.0), and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilized to test the hypothetical relationships among empowering, disempowering, and five aspects of sport character.
Results
The goodness of fit to the data were satisfactory (x2/df = 2.44, p < .001, RMSEA = 0.06, TLI = 0.91, and CFI = 0.92). Youth participants perceived empowering motivational climate created by coaches positively predicted their leadership, resilience, mental toughness, and social inclusion. Moreover, the empowering motivational climate has a large effect on resilience, a medium effect on leadership and mental toughness, and a small effect on social inclusion, respectively.
Discussion
This study’s results support and extends the Empowering Coaching framework in regard to the prediction of youth players’ indicators of character and mental strength, particularly mental toughness, resilience, and social inclusion. Based on present findings, sport coaches should be encouraged to build a more empowering climate with an emphasis on promoting greater task involvement, feelings of autonomy, and belonginess.