The Nature and Transmission of Roles in Sport Teams

Athletes' perceptions of the nature and transmission of roles were explored through 2 projects. First, interviews were conducted with 15 athletes from Canadian interdependent sport teams (e. g., basketball, football, soccer) to understand the types of roles that they self-identified with, and how the expectations for these roles developed. Our results indicated that specialized task roles were typically prescribed by a coach; auxiliary task and social roles tended to evolve out of group interactions; and leadership roles developed through both formal and informal processes. In the second project, 237 Canadian Interuniversity Sport athletes were asked to identify the roles that they occupy to examine whether athletes were more likely to identify with roles according to their status and tenure in the group. Chi-square analyses revealed that starters were more likely to identify specialized task and leadership roles, while nonstarters were more likely to identify auxiliary task roles, all chi(2) (1, N = 237) > 15.54, p<.001. Based on the predominance of nonstarters who identified auxiliary task roles, we suggest that certain athletes may have a greater reliance on the uptake of informal role expectations rather than explicit coaching instruction. This has important theoretical and practical implications for the study of role perceptions in sport, which are discussed in the context of interpersonal sensemaking.