Golf Coaches’ Theories of Ability: Gender Differences and Implications for Feedback

Abstract

Women make up less than 20% of golf’s population in the United Kingdom and United States. The underrepresentation of women has costs to the golf industry, society, and the women who are excluded from golf’s well-documented health and economic benefits. Although the golf industry has introduced initiatives to address the inequity, the disparity in participation rates remains. In sports with similar demographics but greater gender equity, coaching has been an effective tool for increasing female participation. Coaching can have similar effects in golf too. However, as this programme of research hypothesizes, golf coaches have a gender bias that hampers their effectiveness. Golf is a male-dominated game, and, culturally, female golfers are often stereotyped as unskilled players. Such a culture induces stereotype threat in female players and a gender bias in coaches’ incremental theory of others’ golf ability. Because of coaches’ gender bias, they will give less adaptive feedback to women they teach. When coaches give less adaptive feedback, it can lead to lower, rather than higher, levels of player motivation. Results of four studies showed that golf coaches perceive male golfers’ ability more incrementally than female golfers’ ability, and theories of others’ ability relate to the adaptiveness of coaches’ feedback. Having established the importance of coaches’ theories of others’ ability in coaching women golfers, an intervention was conducted. The intervention demonstrated that incremental theories of female golfers’ ability can be developed in golf coaches, and subsequently coaches give more motivating feedback to women golfers. This programme of research suggests that until coaches’ theories of female golfers’ ability are addressed in coach education programmes, coaches’ success in increasing and maintaining gender equity in golf will be limited.

Date of Award	21 Mar 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Sam Carr (Supervisor) & Ceri Brown (Supervisor)