Examining profiles of coping among adolescent hockey players

Rowena Cai, Devin Bonk, Katherine Tamminen

Coping is important for various performance and psychosocial outcomes among athletes. However, most of the coping literature has examined each dimension (i.e., task-oriented, distraction-oriented, and disengagement-oriented coping) on their own, despite research indicating that athletes use coping strategies in combination to deal with stressors in sport. The purpose of this study was to examine coping profiles of adolescent athletes, and to explore associations of different coping profiles with sport-related outcomes. Adolescent hockey players (N = 111; 78% male, 21% female) completed online measures of coping, sport enjoyment, commitment, and intent to play sports next year; coping profiles were identified using latent profile analysis. Athletes categorized in Profile 1 (N = 32) used high levels of task-oriented coping (ToC), and moderate levels of disengagement-oriented coping (DisoC) and distraction-oriented coping (DoC). Athletes in Profile 2 (N = 35) used moderate ToC with low DisoC and DoC; while athletes in Profile 3 (N = 44) used high ToC, with low DisoC and DoC. There were no statistically significant differences in the gender distributions across the three profiles. Additionally, there were no statistically significant differences in sport enjoyment, sport commitment, and intent to play sports next year across the three coping profiles. Across all three profiles, athletes used relatively high levels of task-oriented coping, which may explain the lack of statistically significant differences in the sport outcomes. Future research should use coping profiles to assess how athletes are coping in sport, and to identify coping profiles of athletes in other team sports.