Characteristics of parents who feel a lack of communication with coaches of youth sports

Abstract

Communication between parents and their children’s coaches is important for children’s sports activities, but the relationship between parents and coaches is not well understood. It is possible that parents feel a lack of communication with coaches, which could be due to parents’ experience with sports activities or the social environment of the team. This study aimed to elucidate the characteristics of parents who feel a lack of communication with their children’s coaches of youth sports. A cross-sectional study was conducted on parents of young athletes (n = 6,641) and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to assess factors related to parents’ feeling of a lack of communication with their children’s coaches. Among the respondents, 29.4% of parents felt a lack of communication with their children’s coaches. The factors related to the parents’ feeling were a shorter duration of their children playing the present sport, an absence of experience playing the same sport as their children or playing in a team with high competition level, dissatisfaction with their children’s attitude towards sports activities, and an awareness of verbal and/or physical abuse by the coaches and bullying by the teammates in their children’s team. Parents’ previous sports experience and awareness of interpersonal violence in their children’s team were associated with their feeling of a lack of communication with coaches. Educating parents on the sport and their roles in youth sport is necessary to make appropriate mutual communication between parents and coaches, which could lead to better circumstances for young athletes.