Task Structure, Dyadic Relations, and Athlete Role in Team-sports Settings: Implications for Athletes’ Self, Relational, and Collective Efficacy Beliefs and Performances

Abstract

The performances of athlete pairs correspond to the agency observed in self, relational, and collective efficacy beliefs. A dyadic perspective offers potentially important conceptual and methodological advantages to the investigation of interdependent action. The general purpose of this thesis was to investigate how athletes influence one another in athlete pairs of different (i.e., distinguishable) roles with a specific focus on the efficacy-performance relationship. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the general introduction and review of literature on dyads and efficacy beliefs. Chapters 3-6 include original research. In Chapter 3 relationships among the individual- and dyad-level performances of cheerleading pairs competing at a national-level competition were assessed to provide a measurement tool for dyadic performance settings in which athletes have distinguishable roles. In Chapter 4 person-related sources of variance (in line with the Social Relations Model framework) in athletes’ efficacy beliefs and performances were examined during repeated performance trials of a paired-cheerleading stunt-task with distinguishable roles. The purpose of Chapter 5 was to examine the efficacy-performance predictive chain of an athletic dyad task to extend Feltz’ (1982) efficacy-performance path analysis in an individual sporting context in conjunction with the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model appropriate for dyads with distinguishable roles. The purpose of Chapter 6 was to conduct a replication of the Social Relations Model investigation in Chapter 4 using same-gender distinguishable dyads and extending the framework to four-person cheerleading groups. The final chapter is a summary of the findings with commentary on the findings’ implications, strengths and limitations of the studies, identification of future research directions, and significance of the findings. Overall, the findings in this thesis support that task structure, dyadic relations, and athlete role in a team-task influence how athletes perceive and are perceived relative to self, relational, and collective abilities, with some effects including implications for efficacy-performance predictive relationships.