Understanding the Complexity and Nuance of Social Identity in Youth Sport Using a Novel Ecological Momentary Assessment Method

Abstract

The social environments in sport play an important role in determining whether participants realize the various individual and group outcomes associated with sport participation (Eys et al., 2019). Indeed, sport researchers have increasingly turned to the social identity approach (SIA; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987) for theoretical explanations pertaining to how intragroup and intergroup factors contribute to optimal team environments (e.g., Rees et al., 2015). Two important limitations pertaining to the body of literature are that it has (a) been largely limited to athletes’ perceptions (e.g., an absence of behavioural measures and/or perceptions from social agents such as coaches and parents/guardians) and (b) primarily involved the exploration of perceptions as they relate to the immediate sport activity. This dissertation aims to address these gaps in three studies that introduce the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl et al., 2001) and a sport adapted EAR methodology that enables the exploration of intragroup and intergroup interactions in the sports’ broader social environments (e.g., in the locker room, on the car ride to/from sport, at the dinner table). Study 1 provided a comprehensive overview of traditional and innovative approaches to examining sports’ broader social environments before introducing a sport-adapted EAR methodology as a novel approach to assessing intragroup and intergroup behaviours. Study 2 applied these methodological advancements to explore the interactions between members of youth ice hockey teams during a three-day competitive tournament. The findings showed that youth athletes were more likely to engage in behaviours indicative of ingroup affect and cognitive centrality on days when they received more of the same behaviours from teammates, coaches, and parents. Study 3 investigated identity leadership in the daily interactions and behaviours of competitive youth coaches during the three-day tournament. Coaches’ observed interactions were found to be representative of the four dimensions of identity leadership (i.e., identity prototypicality, advancement, entrepreneurship, and impresarioship), which were used in both positive and negative ways. Overall, the dissertation advanced the sport-adapted EAR methodology as an innovative approach for investigating social identification processes in the everyday interactions between members of youth sport teams.