Coach Leadership Styles and Athlete Representative Level among Uitm Handball Athlete

A thorough review showed that athletes did not perceive an appropriate coach leadership style. Thus, this study will investigate preferred coach leadership styles among UiTM KARISMA (Karnival Sukan Mahasiswa) Handball Athletes. The research is important because it gives potential to help coaches and athletes to develop more attitude behaviour towards sports competitive performance. These cross-sectional research studies recruit 163 respondents (91 males, 72 females). This research has been utilized using stratified random sampling. Respondents were stratified among UiTM KARISMA handball athlete’s participation between 18 to 21 years old. The Independent T-test was used to identify the differences between gender preferences in coach leadership styles. Pearson correlations are used to identify the relationship between coach leadership preferences among handball athletes and their representative level. Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 2.0 are used to analyze the data. The Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS) questionnaire was used to assess athlete’s preferences in coach leadership styles. The result of this study showed that the most preferred coach leadership styles by UiTM KARISMA handball athletes are positive feedback followed by training and instruction, democratic behaviours, social support, and lastly autocratic behaviour. In terms of the preferred coach leadership among gender, there are significant differences in social support. The result of the Pearson correlation to determine the relationship between the coach’s preferences and the athlete’s representative level has a significant relationship recorded. Overall, the result of this study showed that coaches should practice more positive feedback rather than autocratic behaviours. For further researches proposed shown that this research could possibly be focused on different types of coaching in certain sports games.


Introduction
The relationship between coaches and athletes play an important role in the athlete's development of performance and perceived success. According to Chee, Rasyid, Tengah et al (2017), leadership can be defined as the behavioural process of controlling the actions of individuals or organization groups towards specific objectives and also the achievement of those goals. Leadership styles are a dynamic social mechanism in which coaches have to be a good communicator since they have an impact on athletes and social perception. Thus, sports leadership includes not only regulating sports organization or management commitment but also more significantly the position of coaches who are directly responsible with the athletes. Problem statement; Coaches with an autocratic style independently make decisions, authoritarian control over a group and emphasize personal authority in the decision-making process (Chee et al., 2017). Autocratic coaches are less likely to provide athletes interpretation of their performances. According to researchers, the higher levels of athletic competitiveness, the higher autocratic pressure from the coach, the lower chances for athletes to perform excellently. There was a problem with a coach's perception of their leadership style. It indicated that coaches' with positive perception behaviour was contradictory to autocratic coaching behaviour. This contributed to stress experiences to affect athletes (Hyatt and Kavazis, 2019). Instead, the coaches apply the autocratic style during the training session. This cannot be correlated positively with the athlete's preferences. Thus, a good coach leadership style is an important factor in determining the success of athlete performance. Significance of the study; This study contributes to the educational aspect of sports leadership. It is the potential to help coaches and athletes to develop more attitude behaviour towards sports competitive performance. Leaders or coaches in any organization or sports team must be knowledgeable and apply the knowledge of athletes' preferences because coaches need to set up a pleasant and friendly environment for athletes to express desired performance. The researcher believes that this research finding helps coaches develop more understanding of their athlete's preferences in coach leadership styles and boost team morale and motivation (Hyatt and Kavazis, 2019). This study could provide more insights on the relationship between coach leadership style towards their performance. The results may alert relevant organizations such as the Ministry of Sports and Youth to publicize the information resources and methods of coaching training with adapting materials for coaches, practitioners and students in universities as academic references. Literature review; The previous researcher Nizam, et al (2016) found there was a positive relationship between coach leadership behaviours and athlete's satisfaction and performance in silat athletes. This multidimensional theory showed three important positive determinants in coach leadership; 1)actual leader behaviour, 2)leader behaviour preferred by the athlete and 3)required leader behaviour. It is also supported by Chee, Rasyid, Tengah et al (2017), showing that positive feedback can support the athlete's performance. Moreover, Weinberg & Gould (2003) showed that particular coaching styles are connected to performance improvements when the real and desired coaching styles are congruent. This study determines the athlete's preferences but not in the actual coach leadership styles approach. The coach needs to align the preferences of the athlete with the actual style of the coach to enhance the performance of the athlete. Chelladurai and Saleh (1978), urge that the efficacy of coach leadership style depends on its coordination with the desired athlete preferences. Thus, coaches need the commitment to improving their leadership style into considerations when planning for a suitable leadership approach publicized in training.

Methods
The research methodology of this research was quantitative research. Data collected at one time only where by questionnaire will be distributed to participants in a cross-sectional design. This study used descriptive analysis and inferential analysis. The descriptive analysis was used to identify the preferred coach leadership style among handball athletes. While the inferential analysis was used to measure the differences between preferred coach leadership styles among gender and the relationship between coach leadership styles and athlete's representative level. Sampling technique; This research utilized stratified random sampling techniques. Stratified random sampling technique was stratified among handball athletes that participate in Karnival Sukan Mahasiswa (KARISMA) in both genders from 18 to 21 years old students. This recruitment process included nine handball teams that participated in the UiTM KARISMA game. The total population of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) handball athletes that participated in the UiTM KARISMA game is 216 (n=108, females; (n=108, males). Referring to table Krejcie and Morgan (1970), the total sample with 20% error is 163 samples. Thus, researchers can generalise the findings from a sample to represent the population regardless in a very similar context. Measures; The questionnaires will be divided into two section questionnaires: sections A, B, and section C. Section A will collect on the athlete's demographic profile. There are characteristics of a certain population that are usually used to conduct a survey questionnaire. These involve age, gender, and races. For section B, researchers categorized specific representative level scales for each athlete on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (university level), 2 (state level), 3 (national level) to 4 (international level). In section C, the coach leadership style was measured using The Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS). The main objective of LSS is to measure athlete's preferences according to their coach's approach. It was developed by Chelladurai and Salleh (1980) using a 5-point Likert Scale which represents never(1), seldom(2), occasionally(3), often(4) and always(5). It contains five dimensions of 40 questions with Cronbach Alpha, α=0.941. LSS elements include training and instruction (13 items), democratic behaviour (9 items), autocratic behaviour (5 items), social support (8 items) and positive feedback (5 items). Pilot study; A pilot study was conducted on the instruments used in this study to establish the reliability of the questionnaires and to improve research feasibility before distributing the questionnaire (Creswell, 2008). The instrument was translated from English to Bahasa Malaysia to coop with the local environment. The questionnaire goes through a standardization process using the back-to-back translation by language and field experts. The sample for the pilot study using the total population of the final year students in the Sports Science and Recreation studies. A pilot study was carried out on 30 selected respondents in the Faculty of Sport Science and Recreation students. The pilot study data were analysed statistically using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 2.0. Based on the reliability statistic, the overall Cronbach's alpha value is α=0.92. It is proven that the questionnaire has a high and consistent reliability level to capture the feedback from respondents by maintaining their consistency in answering the questionnaire and ready to be distributed.

Result and Discussion
Data collected will be analysed using descriptive and inferential analysis. The descriptive analysis will represent the mean of the preferred coach leadership styles among handball athletes. The second analysis on the differences between coach leadership styles among gender and to identify the relationship between coach leadership style and athlete performances. The questionnaires have been analysed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to determine normal distribution data. Based on the statistical analysis test of normality Kolmogorov-Smirnov all of the dimensions exceed the p-value of 0.05 which can be assumed as normally distributed. Table 1; Descriptive statistics on coach leadership styles Table 1 shows descriptive analysis output that has been analysed using statistical data from participant questionnaires. The mean value for positive feedback recorded the highest dimension of coach leadership style with μ=4.65. While the least mean value recorded was autocratic behaviours with μ=3.01. This result indicates that the most preferred coach leadership styles among handball athletes that participated in Karnival Sukan Mahasiswa (KARISMA) 2019 was positive feedback (μ=4.65) and the least preferred are autocratic behaviours (μ=3.01). Table 2; Differences in leadership styles among gender Independent t-test analysis has been utilized to identify if there are any significant differences between coach leadership styles among gender. Table 2 shows, the first dimension is Training and Instruction (TI) represent, t(161)=-1.589, p=0.114. Next, Democratic Behaviour (DB) recorded, t(161)= -0.948, p=0.344. Autocratic Behaviour (AB) recorded, t(161)= 0.850, p=0.397. Social Support (SS) recorded, t(161) = 2.140, p=0.034. Positive Feedback (PF) recorded, t(161)=1.542, p=0.125. The study result shows that there are significant differences in coach leadership style which is in Social Support (SS) because the pvalue shown is less than the alpha value is below 0.05 (p≤ 0.05).

Table 3; Correlations Between Coach Leadership Style and Athlete representative level
The Person correlation was used to determine the relationship between coach leadership style and athlete representative level. This research shows that there is a significant relationship because of the p-value below 0.05 (p≤ 0.05). As reported, the p-value was significant (0.05). Thus, researchers can conclude that there is a significant relationship between coach leadership style and athlete representative level.
All results of this analysis have been presented in this research finding. Positive Feedback (PF) among UiTM KARISMA handball athletes is the most common preferred coach leadership styles. This was accompanied by Training and Instruction (TI), Social Support (SS) and Democratic Behaviour (DB). The least preferred was Autocratic Behaviour (AB). The results also showed significant differences between coach leadership style among gender and also there is a significant relationship between coach leadership style and athletes representative level.

Conclusion
The most preferred coach leadership style among handball athletes is Positive Feedback (PF). In this research, UiTM KARISMA handball athletes preferred motivating, selfreinforcing response to external or internal input and full of positivity. The athletes prefered the coach to always consider the performance level of athletes to the competition's success. Even though the athlete loses the competition, athletes still favoured their coach to appreciate and praise them for their excellent performance. According to research, Nizam, et al (2016) found that the athletes most preferred coach leadership styles are Positive feedback. This statement contradicts Chee et al (2017) who found that the most perceived coach leadership style was autocratic style. However, an autocratic coach makes decisions independently and working stresses personal authority while working with the decision making. Autocratic coaches are also less likely to provide reasoning explanations of their actions to athletes. This research showed athlete's perceived coach leadership style who understand their perception and it could help them to improve athletes' performance. According to the leadership multidimensional model, to maximize performance and satisfaction, there should be congruence between the actual coach leadership style and the most preferred style (Chelladurai, 2007).
The result of this research showed that female athletes prefer the coaches that give the opinion on athletes' tactical and technical strategies in handball competition. Female athletes also preferred more attention from coaches to improve the athlete's performance. While male athletes prefer closed and informal relationships. Coaches can help the athlete with their problems, congratulating the athlete after performing games and adapting the coach leadership style. Moreover, this research result supported by Chee, Rasyid, Tengah et al (2017) showed that female athletes perceived training and instruction coach leadership styles more than male athletes. These findings suggested that coaches should apply different coach leadership styles for both genders in male and female athletes. This research has shown a significant relationship between athlete coach leadership styles and athlete's representative level. This research objective was supported by the previous researcher Mohamad Nizam, et al (2016) found that there is a positive relationship between coach leadership behaviours and athlete satisfaction in performing silat competition. In addition, it was also supported by Chee et al (2017), which showed that positive feedback among coach leadership was able to boost up athlete performance. This research strengthens the findings by Weinberg & Gould (2003) showing that particular coach leadership styles are connected to performance improvements when the real and desired coach leadership styles are congruent. Thus, coaches need to put athlete's preferences in coach leadership style into considerations when planning for a suitable leadership approach in training.