Investigation of Communication Levels of the Coaches in Some Branches of Individual and Team Sports through the Perceptions of the Athletes in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

The purpose of this study is measuring the communication skills of the coaches coaching in individual and team sports through perceptions of athletes and the effect of success through perception of the athletes. The focus of the research is the communication between the two main groups of the study, the athletes who are competing in individual and team sports and their coaches. The study includes determination of the effects of demographic specifications of these groups in the communication between them, training times of athletes and his/her coach on the skills of communication of the coach over the athlete and the communication skills of the coach on the athletes’ success by the perception of athlete. At the end of the study, the communication skills of coaches will be more effective in the individual sports, a lower education level of the athletes provides better communication development between them and their coaches, and women coaches developing better communication has been observed.


Introduction
In this fast and developing social world, a human's communication skills importance are boosted in daily life and work environments by increasing communication possibilities and expanding their environment to describe him/herself with the skill of transferring their own feelings, wishes, thoughts. With this connection, the people who are improved themselves, may find more success by defining themselves with the communication skills they developed in their social formation and professional life. Communication is transferring of information clearly to the receiver. If one the elements of these are missing: sender, receiver and message, this breaks the communication (Sullivan, Philip, 2004. Communication Differences between Male and Female Team Sport Athletes).
In their research, Esfahani, M. and M. Bayat, (2011), indicate a lack of skills in communication leads to cost increases and definitely will reduce the effectiveness. Communication skills of a leader or manager in professional life using effective techniques with the personnel under their supervision, shows the support in corporate or professional success in many researches. In Poczwardowski (2002)'s work, "successful managers in the organizational goals in trouble shooting pre projected thoughts, conduct, control and change employee behaviour process and are considering individual differences and develop human communication in today's world and cultural differences in different societies requires extensive research.". "Through effective leadership communication to build bridges with words and performance, past and present to inspire a vision about the future are connected" (Mathis, Rick, 2007. Building bridges through effective communication).
Through many researches, the importance of interpersonal communication in sports as a social occupation emphasized (Graham, Jennifer Lyn, 1998. An Analysis of Sport Managers interpersonal communication skill in selected Ontario amateur sport organizations; Sullivan, Philip, 2004. Communication Differences between Male and Female Team Sport Athletes; İdris Yılmaz, 2008. Sporcu Algılarına göre, Farklı Spor Branşlarındaki Antrenörlerin Liderlik Davranışlarının Analizi ve İletisim Beceri Düzeyleri).
Considering athlete performance, there are many factors effective such as relations in the club, motivation, right direction, and enhancing excitement. In accordance, the special case of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the sport community of the country and their intercommunication should be investigated too. As well as the factors listed above, embargoes applied by foreign countries, political debates and applied politics, necessary and enough developments have not been established in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. Hence, in many individual and team sport branches, achievements and improvements stays at the amateur level and cannot reach the professional level.
The factors discussed above led to the underdevelopment of sport and sport activities in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Hence, the athletes and coaches conditions worsened and athletes learning techniques of their specific sport branch were underdeveloped.
At the same time, professional athlete and coach training stagnated with limited possibilities with the borders of Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. Also, there is underdevelopment of in-saloon sports in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus because of inequities in the budget distribution between sport federations. 60% of the sport budget goes to football, 20% goes to the remaining 32 sport federations and 20% goes to school sports and other payments. However, the development of the skill level of athletes interested in in-saloon sports is underdeveloped, and has no doubt become an obstacle to training of potential athletes.

Sampling
In order to determine coaching communication skills and its effect on athlete success by athletes' perceptions, descriptive scanning methodology has been adopted. Research is on first division athletes in individual sports as table tennis, badminton, athletics, kickboxing, fencing and team sports as football, basketball, volleyball, handball in the 2012-2013 academic year in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. Accordingly, the licensed athletes within boundaries of the four districts of Northern Cyprus (Nicosia, Kyrenia District, Guzelyurt and Famagusta) are covered in the study. Due to costs, time constraints and control difficulty, no licensed athletes of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus are covered and thus a group sampling method chosen. Hence it is not possible to adopt probability sampling method, simple random sampling method through interviews with 303 athletes.

Data Collecting methodology
This research, the tool for collecting data is a survey form which consists of two parts. In the first part, there are questions aimed to defining the athletes' and their coaches' demographic specifications. In the second part, there is "Coach Communication Skills Measure" developed by Yılmaz (2008) to measure the coaches communication skills by athletes' perceptions.
The survey form developed by the researcher consists of the following questions to be answered by the athletes: The sport they play, gender, age, marital status, training time with current coach, success rate of individual or teams in the last five years, coach's age group, education level, experience in years.
In the second part of the survey form, the questions ask the athletes to measure the communication skills of their coaches according to the athlete's perception. The measure developed by Yılmaz (2008) consists of 48 items likert typed and used five types for pointing: "Never", "Rarely", "Sometimes", "Often" and "Always". When assigning points; "Never", choice gets 1 point, "Rarely" choice gets 2 points, "Sometimes" choice gets 3 points, "Often" choice gets 4 points and "Always" choice gets 5 points.
After conducting factor analysis, the framework validity will be accepted due to the correlation variability between 0,44 and 0,86 of the measure used. The measure accepted confident by finding croanbach alfa value to measure the trustworthiness of the survey as 0,92 with preliminary study and application to 40 athletes.

Analysis of Data
The data obtained from the survey form, error cleaning (editing) process has been applied on the data collected after being transferred to a computer. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 15.0 for Windows Evaluation edition has been used for data analysis.
From the results of confidence analysis, the croanbach alfa coefficient determined as 0, 96 and the measurement accepted as confident. To determine the hypothesis tests to use in statistical analysis, the Kolmogrov-Smirnov test has been applied to see if the data set shows normal distribution. At the end of test, the data set shows the normal distribution and parametric hypothesis tests was used. The frequency tables have been used to determine the demographics of athletes and coaches who were interviewed.
To determine the athletes' answers for the Coach Communication skills scale, defining statistics are given such as frequency tables, averages and standard deviation values.
To compare the answers of athletes for the Coach Communication skills scale by demographic specifications, parametric hypothesis tests such as the t test(student t test) and Variance analysis (ANOVA) have been used. The Sheffe Test has been applied to determine the source of variables which caused differences between averages according to Variance analysis results. Finally, Chi square test has been used to determine the success situation with their own perception by athletes' demographic specifications.   When Table 3analysed, it has been seen that 16,50 % of athletes training with female coaches and 83,50 % training with male coaches. When looking to age groups of coaches it is seen that; 9,90 % is 30 years old or below , %54,79 between 31-40 years old and %35,31is 41 years old and above.

Findings
26,73 % of the coaches of athletes has 5 years and less thantraining as coach, 42,90 % of between 6-10 yearshas experience and30,36 %of them has experience 11 yearsand above. The Coaches of athletes education situation is as: 47,52 % of them are graduated from sport academy and took professional education to be a coach,52,48 % did not take any education to perform as a coach. When we look to the data to see training times together as coach and athlete; 13,20 % is training with their current coach less than 1 year, 45,54 % is training with current coach between 1-2 years, %23,43is training between 3-4 years togetherand 17,82 %is training together 5 yearsand above. In Table 4.it is observed that %79,54of athletes defines themselves as successful in their sport branch, %10,89 of them defines his/herself as average and %9,57 sees him/herself as unsuccessful. When Table 5 analysed, according to the surveyed athletes, gender of them on difference between the mean scores of Coach Communication Skills Scale total were not statistically significant (p> 0.05).
When the results of the variance analysis that used for comparison of Coach communication skills scale total score means according to athletes age groups was analysed;its observed that between the athletes' and coach communication skills scale score means by athletes age groups, there is statistically significantly different(p<0,05). By the results of the conducted Tukey test, according to age groups, Coach Communication skills scale score differences are caused by the athletes of age group 18 years old and below and age group 25 years old and above. The athletes of the age group 18 years old and below are scored better on Coach Communication skills scale than the age group 25 years old and above.
By the conducted variance analysis, it's observed that there is statistically significant difference on Coach Communication skills scale total score means by education level of athletes.
(p<0,05). As a result of latter conducted advanced analysis, it is found that this difference originated between the groups High school graduates and university graduates.High school graduates scored higher results than university graduates on Coach Communication skills scale. In Table 6 The result shows that Coach Communication skills scale total score averages for individual sports athletes is higher than team sport athletes.
Investigation of the averages of the Coach Communication skills scale total score by sport branches shows that: with variation analysis outcomes, there is statistically significant difference in the means of the Coach communication skills scale scores by sports branches (p<0,05). Conducted Tukey test was determined which sports athletes are the reason for this difference, results shows that; the average scores of the coach communication skills scale for football branch athletes is lower than basketball, athletics and badminton sport branch players` score averages.Also, volleyball sport branch players` score averages for coach communication skills scale is less than athletics and badminton sports athletes.  Table 7 shows that there is statistically significant difference in the score averages of coach communication skills scale for gender of athletes coaches (p<0,05). Also the score means of athletes who are training with female coaches is higher than athletes' training with male coach.
access nearly to any international sport organization. Therefore focusing education in sport and training good athletes with a competitive edges would help to recognize North Cyprus whenever there is chance given to compete at the international level. Also supporting female coach training and encouraging sport clubs to employ more female coaches may lead to openings for coaching and athlete training. This approach may be tested to determine if there is an advantage of being a female coach in producing better results in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. The sport academies contribution to sport community by means of professional education helps to bring results and sport achievements relatively faster through coaches with more understanding of sport and better communication skills. In branch education of sports, focusing on the education of coaches and their communication skills will help bring new perspective for training methods and psychological preparation of athletes through better communication. Regulating to employ coaches with a sport education background would bring professionalism in coaching too.