GROUP COHESION OF FEMALE INTERCOLLEGIATE COACTING AND INTERACTING TEAMS ACROSS A COMPETITIVE SEASON

The purpose of this study was to examine whether across a season of co mpetition, women's intercollegiate coacting (gymnastics, swimming) and interacting (lacrosse, basketball) teams differed in cohesion. Sevent y female athletes ranging in age from 18-22 years (gymnastics, n = 18; swimming, n = 22; lacrosse, n = 1G; basketball, n = 13) participated in the study. The Group Environment Question-naire (Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1985), which is composed of four subscales: Attraction to t he Group-Task (ATG-T), Attraction to the Group-Social (ATG-S), Group i ntegration-Task (GI-T), Group Integration-Social (GI-S) was used to me asure cohesion. Testing for cohesion occurred pre-season (3 days prior to first regular competition), mid-season, and post-season, A 2 x 2 A NCOVA was utilized to compare coacting and interacting team cohesion s cores on each subscale at mid-season and post-season. Preseason measur es were utilized as covariates. A significant sport by time interactio n (p < .05) was found on only the ATG-T subscale at mid-season with co acting teams displaying significantly greater changes in cohesion than interacting teams. These findings are discussed in terms of gender ty pe of activity, overall reason performance, and NCAA division status.