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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 11, No. 3

Publication Date: March 25, 2024

DOI:10.14738/assrj.113.16632.

Srem-Sai, M. (2024). Cognitive Appraisals of Organizational Stressors and Coping Styles of Football Coaches and Players in Ghana.

Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(3). 464-482.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Cognitive Appraisals of Organizational Stressors and Coping

Styles of Football Coaches and Players in Ghana

Medina Srem-Sai

Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Sports,

University of Education, P. O. Box 25, Winneba, Ghana

ABSTRACT

The study assessed how football coaches and players appraised and coped with

stressors they experienced or encountered. Specifically, the study assessed the

following: (1) stress appraisal mechanisms employed by coaches and players, (2)

coping mechanisms adopted by coaches and players, and (3) association between

stress appraisals and coping styles among coaches and players in the Ghana

national football league. Employing the descriptive survey design, census sampling

was used to select 424 footballers and 44 coaches who answered the Stress

Appraisal Measure (SAM) and the Modified Coping Orientation to Problems

Experienced (MCOPE) inventories. Descriptive statistics (means and standard

deviation) and multivariate multiple regression were used to analyze the data. The

findings showed that football coaches and players reportedly used more

controllable-by-self and challenge appraisals and employed more problem-focused

coping styles (increasing effort, active coping, and planning) than emotion-focused

coping styles (seeking social support for emotional reasons, venting of emotions,

and self-blame) during stressful situations. Further, those who used facilitative

appraisal mechanisms adopted functional coping mechanisms and vice versa. Sport

psychologists are encouraged to organize regular psychologicaltraining workshops

on a variety of functional coping styles (e.g., cognitive restructuring, planning,

increasing effort and active coping) to help football coaches and players deal with

the demands associated with competitions to enhance their psychological well- being.

Keywords: Coaches, cognitive appraisal, coping styles, players, stress

INTRODUCTION

Globally, athletes and coaches who engage in professional sports experience many stressful

situations (stressors) because of the demanding nature of the environment within which they

operate [1-12]. These stressors encountered can lead to withdrawal from work, reduced self- confidence, poor performance in their sport, low work satisfaction, negative emotions and

mental health disorders like depression and anxiety [13-17] if these sport performers fail to

adopt functional coping mechanisms [18-19]. Even though, prior stress-related research

conceptualised stress as a unitary construct and linked stressors to many detrimental effects

on the individual, current stress literature suggests that individuals may react differently to

demanding situations. Therefore, not all perceived stressful encounters cause stress among

sport performers [2-3, 8].

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Srem-Sai, M. (2024). Cognitive Appraisals of Organizational Stressors and Coping Styles of Football Coaches and Players in Ghana. Advances in Social

Sciences Research Journal, 11(3). 464-482.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.113.16632

The transactional conceptualization of stress and coping suggest that there are different ways

individuals evaluate their environment relative to their personal goals, values and beliefs ([i.e.,

cognitive appraisal], [2, 19-20]). Cognitive appraisal plays a vital mediating role in the

evaluation of a situation as either stressful or otherwise and further influences the coping

mechanism utilized in any given situation.

Lazarus and Folkman [20] dichotomized cognitive appraisal into two dimensions, namely;

primary appraisal referring to a person’s evaluation of the relevance of her/his values, beliefs

and goals in relation with the particular situation, which can be appraised as either stressful,

benign-positive or irrelevant. An appraisal of irrelevance of a situation makes it non- threatening to the values, goals and/or beliefs of the person. Again, a benign-positive appraisal

perceives a positive outcome to the wellbeing of the person. Therefore, the individual requires

no coping effort to deal with an irrelevant or benign-positive situation. An individual evaluates

a situation as stressful, based on the differences in vulnerability and sensitivity to specific

situations [19-20]. A threatening situation is an expectation of loss or harm to the person in

future. A challenge appraisal is an expectation of future gain or benefits to the individual whilst

harm/loss appraisal is an expectation to damage that has already occurred to the person.

Secondary appraisal denotes an individual’s evaluation of what can be done to deal with a

stressor, which determines the level of control over the stressful situation by coping [21].

There’s an indication that primary appraisal does not always occur first and cannot be

autonomous of secondary appraisal. Thus, the variation in appraisals does not rely on timing

but more on the appraisal content [19]. Peacock and Wong [21] developed and validated a

survey instrument that focuses on three primary appraisal dimensions namely; challenge

(feeling joyous and perceiving a gain in future), threat(perceiving a future harm) and centrality

(perceiving a situation/s as important to one’s wellbeing) and three secondary appraisal

dimensions namely; controllable-by-self (an evaluation of control over a situation),

controllable-by-others (an evaluation that help can come from others) and uncontrollable-by- anyone (an evaluation that help will come from no one to deal with the stressor/s).

Coping is defined as “continuously shifting cognitive and behavioural attempts to deal with

explicit internal and/or external demands that are evaluated as taxing or draining the resources

of the individual” [20] and is closely connected to cognitive appraisal. According to previous

studies, athletes and coaches must use a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with the

pressures associated with the competitive sport setting. Thus, Lazarus and Folkman [20]

distinguished between problem-focused coping (i.e., means to resolve or minimize the obstacle

or stressor) and emotion-focused coping (i.e., means for reducing unpleasant emotions or

suffering). While problem-focused coping is viewed as adaptive to performance and wellbeing

of sport performers, emotion-focused coping is otherwise considered maladaptive and linked

with a detrimental performance and wellbeing [2, 8].

Several researchers have studied different ways that coaches and athletes cognitively appraise

and cope with stressors they encounter [8, 22]. For example, Dixon et al. [23] demonstrated

that coaches benefited greatly from seeing stressors as challenges and reiterated that when

individuals evaluated the resources available to them to be inadequate in a particular situation,

they responded with maladaptive appraisal (i.e., threat). Alternately, if adequate resources are

perceived to be available, responses then became adaptive (i.e., challenge), facilitating a drive

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 11, Issue 3, March-2024

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

towards an achievement of goals. Gomes et al. [24] found among footballers who evaluated

stressful encounters as challenging, felt more in control of the stressors. These players reported

having more resources for coping, leading to pleasant feelings, while those who evaluated the

stressors as threatening were more susceptible and experienced more unpleasant emotions.

Again, following the experience of an acute source of stress, Turkish athletes’ appraisal of self- confidence was inversely related to aggressive coping styles [25]. Generally, challenge

appraisals are linked with problem-focused coping while threat appraisals are associated with

the use of emotion-focused coping [8, 23].

Despite stress being extensively studied in Ghana, majority of these studies used non-sporting

populations like security personnel [26-27], employees of other organizations [28-30] and

health workers [31]. Only few studies [9-10] have studied the stressors experienced by football

coaches and players [9] with a validation study [10]. To date, no study has investigated the

cognitive appraisals and coping mechanisms across any sporting sample in Ghana. Moreover,

previous studies [4, 14, 32-34] stressed on the need to consider cultural differences in the

evaluation of individuals’ affect and stressful experiences. From a sociocultural standpoint,

there could be many common values, norms, and social behaviours that underlie patterns of

stressful reactions and appraisal mechanisms [35-36). Consequently, coping mechanisms may

also differ among cultures [37]. Rather, such strategies might be trapped in diverse cultures

through learned experiences to manage encountered stressful situations [38]. As a follow-up to

our previous study, Srem-Sai et al. [9] found selection, team and culture and goals and

development as the predominant stressors encountered by football coaches and players in the

national league. The current study examined the cognitive appraisals and coping mechanisms

used by coaches and players who had experienced different organizational stressors.

Specifically, the study assessed (1) the stress appraisal mechanisms adopted by the football

coaches and players, (2) the coping mechanisms utilized and (3) the association between stress

appraisals and coping mechanisms utilized. Knowledge about these experiences would assist

sport psychologists to help design appropriate stress management interventions for coaches

and players to promote their psychological wellbeing.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Participants’ Selection

The study used a cross-sectional survey design. Through census sampling, a total of 594

participants who participated in the 2020/2021 national football league season undertook the

survey (i.e., 540 players and 54 coaches). However, only 424 players and 44 coaches officially

completed the survey, resulting in a response rate of 78.5 and 81.5%, respectively. The players’

age ranged from 16 to 32 years (Mage = 22.36, SD = 3.53) while coaches’ ages ranged from 31

to 70 years. Years of experience for players ranged from 1 to 15 years (M = 2.69, SD = 1.82) and

1 to 17 years for coaches. Majority of the participants reported years of experience below 5

years. The inclusion criteria required that players and coaches were officially registered by the

Ghana Football Association who took part in the 2020/2021 Premier League season.

Additionally, coaches surveyed should have obtained either a license A or B from the

Confederation of African Football (CAF). In line with Swann’s et al. [39] classification of elite

athletes, surveyed players were regarded as elite because the Ghana premier League is

considered to be the highest level of professional football in the country. Thus, reaching this

level of competitiveness (premier level) was a great achievement in their professional career.

Only 9 (2.12%) of the participants had diploma and degree certificates, while 143 (33.72%)