Abstract

This study evaluated gamesmanship beliefs of high school coaches and athletes from a rural Midwestern state in the United States. Two hundred and fifty-six coaches and 273 high school athletes participated in this study. Participants completed a 25-statement survey. The survey consisted of 25 gamesmanship statements that asked subjects to indicate if an action was clearly acceptable (1), acceptable (2), unacceptable (3), or clearly unacceptable (4). Chronbach's Alpha measure (a=.938) indicated a high consistency and reliability for the statements on the survey instrument. A crosstabs analysis provided Pearson Chi-Square or Fischer Exact tests to identify statistical significance within the variables. For all of the statements, a majority of both groups identified the statements as either unacceptable/clearly unacceptable. A statistically significant difference in responses for coaches and athletes was found in 21 of the 25 statements, with a greater percentage of coaches identifying the statements as unacceptable/clearly unacceptable than athletes.