Coping Amongst Elite-Level Sports Coaches: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The current study presents a systematic review of six empirical research studies that have explored coping amongst elite-level sport coaches. The study was carried out employing Fletcher et al.’s meta-model of stress, emotions, and performance as a basis for the review. The present results clearly revealed that, despite being an important aspect of coaches’ functioning, coping is almost never researched in its full complexity, and scarce attention is given to cognitive appraisals and long-term outcomes. To our knowledge, current research has so far been limited to the perceived stressors and employed coping strategies. Compared with problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping is less frequently reported. Emotion-focused coping also has some limitations regarding occurrence and diversity in reported strategies. The reasons for this are not well-known due to the lack of comprehensiveness in the research. Hence, researchers are encouraged to further investigate coping amongst elite-level coaches and to do so by treating it as a concept affected by appraisals and personal and situational characteristics that exist in the context of a larger stress process.