Surveying of Causal Attributions of Elite and Sub - Elite Male Athletes in Individual Sports(from the Perspective of Athletes and Coaches)

Attribution theory is one of the psychological dynamic theories that explains and describes people's perception of facts. Therefore, the aim of this research was to study success and failure attributions in athletes and coaches. The population of this study consisted of athletes and coaches of national teams (elite) and club teams (sub–elite) in swimming, badminton, karate, taekwondo, table tennis and wrestling. 120 male players and 12 coaches were selected through multistage convenience sampling method. Then, data were collected by attribution styles questionnaire (ASQ). The data were analyzed by multivariate ANOVA at P˂0.05. The findings showed that elite athletes expressed more unstable and specific attributions in failure conditions. In contrast, sub–elite athletes expressed more stable and general attributions in failure conditions (P≤0.0001). As well, the coaches of elite athletes expressed more stable and specific attributions than the coaches of sub–elite athletes in success dimension (P≤0.0001). The results showed that the casual attribution of athletes (elite and sub-elite) and their coaches (elite and sub-elite) expressed elite athletes and coache's privilege as elite athletes expressed that most of the reasons for their success were internal, stable and general. Also, athletes and coaches stated different attributions in the same situation. It is recommended that coaches encourage their athletes to attempt more to express all of their competencies in the competitions.