a comparison of coaches' power resources and athletes' team cohesion from the viewpoints of female and male coaches and athletes in south khorasan province

the aim of the present study was to compare the power resource ofcoaches and athletes' team cohesion from the viewpoints of male and femalecoaches and athletes in south khorasan province. the method of this studywas descriptive which was conducted as a field study. the statisticalpopulation consisted of all coaches (n=120) and athletes (n=800) in fourteam sports. based on morgan table, 92 coaches and 260 athletes wereselected as the sample by simple random sampling method. the data werecollected by two questionnaires: power in sport questionnaire (psq) andgroup environment questionnaire (geq). validity of the questionnaireswas confirmed by professors of sport management and their reliability wasdetermined using the cronbach’s alpha coefficient as 0.78-0.79 and 0.81respectively. considering the results of kolmogorov–smirnov test, nonparametricmethods of u-mann whitney and kruskal-wallis test were used(p≤0.05). results showed that from the viewpoints of both groups, expertpower was the first priority and coercing power was the last priority inpower resources of the coaches. priorities of team cohesion of athletes (menand women) were attraction to group-task, group integration-task, attractionto group-social and group integration-social respectively. there was asignificant difference between the viewpoints of male and female coaches inreward power, coercing power and legal power while there was nosignificant difference between males and females' viewpoints in expertpower and referent power. it is recommended that coaches should use moreexpert power to achieve higher team cohesion as this is the expert powerwhich is used by coaches and approved by athletes more than other powerresources.