Title: Athletes’ experiences of felt trust in the coach-athlete relationship
Supervisor: Dr. Desmond McEwan
Committee members: Dr. Erica Bennett, Dr. Mark Beauchamp
Abstract: The interdependent relationship between coaches and athletes has been described in terms of four conceptual dimensions: closeness, commitment, co-orientation, and complementarity. Specifically, closeness has been considered foundational to the coach-athlete relationship (CAR), reflecting the emotional connection between athletes and coaches. Notably, this emotional bond is often characterized by the presence of trust. Within high-performance environments involving interdependent teams (e.g., military, healthcare), the trust-performance relationship is well-documented, and although there is some evidence of this relationship in sport, our understanding remains limited. Research in sport has typically considered trust from the trustor’s perspective (i.e., the person offering their trust) rather than the trustee’s (i.e., the person being trusted). Trust from the trustee’s perspective is known as felt trust, representing one’s perception that others trust them. Although organizational research has indicated that felt trust may have a meaningful relationship with factors relevant to the context of sport, such as performance and well-being, this construct has not yet been explored in sport. Thus, in the proposed research, I aim to qualitatively explore how athletes experience felt trust, specifically its manifestation in the CAR and how feeling trusted shapes athletes’ experiences in sport. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted at a single time point with 12-15 individual sport athletes competing at the highly trained/national level. Reflexive thematic analysis will be used to identify the meaning athletes associate with the concept of felt trust. The criteria to achieve a rigorous, high-quality study—though subject to change as the proposed work evolves—will include width, coherence, credibility, and transparency. This research may support the training and development of coaches, contribute to desirable athlete outcomes, and nurture meaningful connections in sport.