Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article with title “Players’ perceptions of coach leadership style and motivational climate in soccer” is interesting and I want to express my thanks for the opportunity to review it.

Recommendations:

The references no. 17 does not appear in text.

Lines 77-82: Need citations.

Please underline in 2-3 sentences the novelty of your study related to previous researches.

Participants: Did you apply some inclusion or exclusion criteria’s?

Results: I recommend calculating the Cronbach alpha for your questionnaire.

I recommend splitting the Conclusion in two parts: Discussions and Conclusions.  

Lines 212-222: Need to be revised. I recommend highlighting the most important ideas of previous findings related to your study. Only to add into parentheses many references are not recommended.

The conclusions need to be more specific to your topic. 

Please add the limits and strengths of your study. 

 

Author Response

‍

Reviewer Response 1

Dear Doctor:

We appreciate the review you have carried out and the comments you have made in this regard, which will surely help to improve our work.

Below, we respond to each comment, trusting that the deficiencies found are now corrected.

Cordial regards,

The authors

 

The references no. 17 does not appear in text.

Indeed, as you indicate, this does not appear in the text, it should read as follows:

Lines 69-71. “However, despite the increase in empirical research in Spain [15, 16, 17], studies are still lacking to confirm whether coaches' leadership styles are related to athletes' preferences and athletic performance in children and adolescents.”

Lines 77-82: Need citations.

 “When the motivational climate is task-oriented, the athletes’ main goal is to perform with mastery, acquire new skills and knowledge, strive to the maximum, and do their best [1, 3,19]. Conversely, when the climate is ego-oriented, players worry about their own ability and show that they are more competent than others [1, 5, 10, 19,20]. “

Please underline in 2-3 sentences the novelty of your study related to previous researches.

Lines 49-51. “It seems relevant to determine whether leadership based on Training and Instruction and task-oriented motivational climate favor desirable outcomes, such as team union, player satisfaction, and persistence in the activity.”

Lines 203-204. “Sporting objectives only had a positive and significant  relationship with democratic behavior (r = .21).

Lines 205-206. “Task-oriented motivational climate was positively and significantly related to the three outcome variables: satisfaction (r = .30), sport commitment (f = .31), and sport objectives (r = .28)”.

Lines 227-228. “This research did not find the trend observed in other studies related to correlations between the Training and Instruction style [38,45] and Democratic Behavior styles [42,38] and player satisfaction”.

Lines 241-243. “The leadership dimension based on Training and Instruction acts as a predictor of the outcome variables satisfaction and degree of sport commitment. However, the Training and Instruction style does not predict the players' sport objectives”.

Lines 244-247. The joint analysis of these variables (task-oriented motivational climate and Training and Instruction style) better predicts the dependent variables Satisfaction and Sport Commitment.

Participants: Did you apply some inclusion or exclusion criteria’s?

We proposed to the two city Clubs that all the registered and duly federated players, as of 10 years of age, could participate in the study if they wished, because we considered that, at younger ages, they would not understand what we were asking or complete the questionnaires properly. The included teams were:

Juvenile (+ 16 years)

Female (+ 14 years)

Cadet (14-16 years)

Infantil (12-14 years old)

Alevín (10-12 years)

The U8 and U10 teams that were under 10 years of age were excluded from this study, as were the players who did not hand in their parents' properly signed informed consent to authorize their participation in the study.

Please, see pag 3, lines 102-104

 

Results: I recommend calculating the Cronbach alpha for your questionnaire.

Cronbach Alfa of the Scales

	Cronbach's  alpha	ELEMENTS
LEADERSHIP	0.813	40
TASK-ORIENTED CLIMATE	0.894	4
EGO-ORIENTED CLIMATE	0.734	3
SATISFACTION	0.781	5
DEGREE OF COMMITMENT	0.779	11
SPORT OBJECTIVES	0.909	18

 

Please, see pag 4, line 173.

 

I recommend splitting the Conclusion in two parts: Discussions and Conclusions. 

Following your recommendation, we have divided it into two parts. Then, we drafted the discussion and the amended conclusion to make it more specific to our topic. We have drafted it below in the section where youhave  requested it.

DISCUSSION

Although we have tried to deepen the analysis of the relationships between the different target variables, this research presents some limitations. First, it is a cross-sectional study and, although several authors in previous studies have reported results of correlations and reliability similar to those found in this document, longitudinal studies should be carried out and the relationships between the different leadership styles and motivational climate should be examined in depth. This would provide information about the stability of the results obtained.

             In the present study, data were collected through self-report questionnaires. Although we took the precaution of not placing players and coaches in the same space when completing these questionnaires, the answers may be biased in some cases due to social desirability, especially in younger age groups.

To analyze the influence of the motivational climate on players at these ages, other factors that may affect them, such as parents, classmates, family situation or social status, should be considered. This would be an interesting pathway for future research.

In short, the objective of effective leadership is to create and develop a climate within the organization or team that will achieve the desired performance and the satisfaction expected by each of the team members. Based on the results obtained, we encourage parents, coaches and sports technicians to instill in young athletes values based on effort, work, cooperation and support, thus creating in the group a climate that favors communication and a good feeling among team members, and to reject individualistic behaviors that seek personal recognition and satisfaction at the expense of teamwork. Those responsible for the instruction of young athletes should be flexible in adopting the appropriate leadership style for each situation and the team's own culture, which unites all the members around the same goals.

 

Lines 212-222: Need to be revised. I recommend highlighting the most important ideas of previous findings related to your study. Only to add into parentheses many references are not recommended

Lines 219-226: To summarize, the preceding studies provide support for the relationship found in our study on players' preference for leadership styles of training-instruction and positive feedback. The results show that both the leadership style based on training and instruction and the one based on positive feedback are habitual behaviors in the practice of this sport, and are highly valued by players and necessary for the teams to achieve optimal player-coach cohesion. Players prefer training-instruction [34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40] and positive feedback [41, 42, 38, 43, 44] leadership styles. These findings suggest that players show an attitude toward sport that is closer to learning than to recreation. Autocratic behavior is, in general, the least desired, and this finding coincides with prior works [41, 37, 42, 40, 44]. Likewise, this leadership style is associated with players’ lower satisfaction [38, 45]. This finding suggests that, in sports teams, a participatory, cooperative, and dialoguing environment among all its members should be promoted. The present results therefore support Hypothesis 1.

 

The conclusions need to be more specific to your topic. 

 

CONCLUSIONS

The results found show that the players prefer Training and Instruction leadership styles. (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1978; Chelladurai & Carron, 1983; Terry & Howe, 1984; Terry, 1984; Chelladurai et al., 1988; Carvalho, 1991; Hastie, 1995) and Reinforcement (Chelladurai, 1984; Schliesman, 1987; Chelladurai et al. 1988; Sanches, 1991; Manso, 1996), which indicates that the players show a learning attitude towards sport rather than a recreational attitude, contrary to what one might think.

 As for autocratic behavior, it is the least desired (Chelladurai, 1984; Terry, 1984; Schliesman, 1987; Hastie, 1995; Manso, 1996) and implies less satisfaction of theplayers (Chelladurai et al, 1988; Dwyer & Fischer, 1990), which shows that in our teams, a participatory, cooperative and communicative environment is promoted among all its members.

Our data do not show the tendency of other studies that report that the Training and Instruction (Chelladurai et al., 1988; Dwyer & Fischer, 1990) and Democratic styles (Schliesman, 1987; Chelladurai et al., 1988) correlate positively with players' Satisfaction. In fact, Democratic Behavior is the only leadership style in our study that did not show a significant correlation with players' satisfaction.

Regarding the motivational climate preferred by players, it is based on the task engagement, coinciding with the results of Martens (1987); the most important situational variable is the task to be done. This gives the players greater feelings of overall satisfaction, as opposed to Ego orientation (Almagro,Sáenz, González, & Moreno, 2011; Carlín & del Valle, 2009; Cecchini, González, Carmona,  & Contreras, 2004; Cruz & Boixadós, 1999; García, Leo, Martín, & Sánchez, 2008; Guzmán & García-Ferriol, 2002; Moreno & Soledad, 2007) as well as being considered as a good predictor of sports performance (Cervelló & Santos-Rosa, 2007; Carlín & del Valle, 2009). This orientation is very important, especially in collective sports, as is our case, because they need more direction, coordination and structuring of the group. The perception of a task-orientated climate in the teams emphasizes that even in the cases that require maximum performance, such as official competitions, it is sought.

In the correlations found, all the leadership styles except for Autocratic Behavior correlate positively and significantly with each other and with task-oriented motivational climate, supporting our hypothesis. The regression analyses show that the leadership dimension based on Training and Instruction acts as a predictor of the outcome variables players' Sport Satisfaction and Sport Commitment.  The task-oriented motivational climate also predicts players' Satisfaction, Sport Commitment, and Sport Objectives. The joint analysis of these variables (task-oriented motivational climate and Training and Instruction style) better predicts the dependent variables of players' Satisfaction and Sport Commitment, with a greater weight for the task-oriented motivational climate.

 

Please add the limits and strengths of your study.

 

Limitations:

 

Lines 250-254. “This is a cross-sectional study, and although several authors in previous studies have reported correlations and reliability results similar to those found in this document, longitudinal studies should be carried out, and the relationship between the different styles of leadership and motivational climate should be examined in depth. This would provide information about the stability of the results obtained.”

 

Lines 255-258: "Data were collected through self-report questionnaires. Although we took the precaution of not placing the players and coaches in the same space while completing these questionnaires, the responses may be biased in some cases due to social desirability, especially in the younger age groups.”

 

Lines 259-261: To analyze the influence of motivational climate on players at these ages, other factors that may affect them, such as parents, classmates, family situation or social status, should be considered. This would be an interesting pathway for future research”.

 

Strengths.

 

Leadership styles based on Training and Instruction positively and significantly predict players' Satisfaction and Sport Commitment, but do not predict Sport Objectives.

 

Likewise, task-oriented motivational climate also acts as a predictor of the three outcome variables: Satisfaction, Sport Commitment and Sport Objectives. The joint analysis of these variables (Training and Instruction style and task-oriented motivational climate) better predicts the dependent variables.

 

Sport objectives only have a positive and significant relationship with the Democratic style.

 

The relationship between the Democratic Style and players' Satisfaction did not reach statistical significance.

 

Based on the results obtained, parents, coaches and sports technicians are encouraged to instill in young athletes values based on effort, work, cooperation and support, thus creating in the group a climate that favors communication and a good feeling among team members, and to reject individualistic behaviors that seek personal recognition and satisfaction at the expense of teamwork. Those responsible for the instruction of young athletes should be flexible in adopting the appropriate leadership style for each situation and developing the team's own culture, which unites all the members around the same goals. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,
the article deals with a subject that is not new in literature, although it might be of interest if the results were highly explanatory.
Although the article is well written and developed, my main concern is that the results are irrelevant because they explain a low percentage of variance. The most optimal model explains only 14.5% of the variance. This suggests that independent variables are not the determinants or that the statistical technique is not the most appropriate.
The authors could try to use techniques commonly used in psychology as models of structural equations.

Author Response

Reviewer Response 2

 

Dear Doctor:

We appreciate the review you have carried out and the comments you have made in this regard, which will surely help to improve our work.

Below, we respond to each comment, trusting that the deficiencies found are now corrected.

Cordial regards,

The authors

 

 

RESPONSE

Indeed, as you say, the article does not deal with a new topic in the literature, but it does gather variables that are not analyzed conjointly in previous works. True, there are previous studies that have measured the relationship between leadership styles and motivational climate; motivational climate and satisfaction; motivational climate and commitment; leadership styles and satisfaction, but we have not found any precedents in the literature that analyze conjointly the predictive variables (leadership styles and motivational climate) with the outcome variables (satisfaction, sport commitment and sport goals) in young soccer players. Therefore, we consider that our study can make new contributions to the existing literature on this subject.

Regarding your comments that "it might be interesting if the results were highly explanatory" and that "the results are irrelevant because they explain a low percentage of variation, 14.5% of the variance of the best model", we note that we would prefer the present work to explain 70% of the variation and that the correlations between the study variables were higher than r = .90 in all cases. As you will already know from your own experience, these "ideal" percentages only occur in cases of manuals that are offered to students to begin their studies of these analyses, but in real life, and with unbiased samples, it is very unlikely to obtain such satisfactory results for our works.

However, the results we have found in our work do not differ too much from those found in other publications. We offer the following examples:

Torregrosa, D., Belando, N., Moreno-Murcia, J. A. (2013). Predicción de la satisfacción con la vida en practicantes de ejercicio físico saludable. Cuadernos de Psicología del Deporte 14 (1), 177-122.

            In linear regression analyses, the first variable did not explain any percentage of the variance. In the second step, 23% of life satisfaction was positively predicted. In the third step, 37% of the explained variance of life satisfaction was predicted.

Ortiz, P., Chirosa, L. J., Martín, I., Reigal, R., García-Mas, A. (2016). Compromiso deportivo a través del clima motivacional creado por madre, padre y entrenador en jóvenes futbolistas. Revista de Psicología del Deporte 25(2), 245-252.

            The variance explained by the five variables studied ranged between 32% and 15%.

Torregrosa, M., Sousa, C., Viladrich, C.,Villamarín, F., Cruz, J. (2008). El clima motivacional y el estilo de comunicación del entrenador como predictores del compromiso en futbolistas jóvenes. Psicothema 2008. Vol. 20 (2), 254-259.

            The predictor variables were:

-         Fun: For the motivational climate task 28%, for Support 31%, and for Motivational Ego Climate, 32%.

-         Alternatives: 3% for the Motivational Task Climate and 4% for the Motivational Ego Climate.

-         Commitment: 20% for the Motivational Task Climate.

As you will have observed, the percentages of explained variance in variables that act as predictors of other variables are usually not as satisfactory as one would probably wish.

On the other hand, there may be innumerable variables that can be considered in studies of this type; we chose three of those possible, which we believed could have some kind of relationship and, in effect, they did explain the cause-effect relationship that unites them although not in a high percentage.

Regarding your comment that we could have used other techniques, such as structural equation models-- which could actually be adequate as we see in other investigations--, we considered that structural equation models are more flexible and less restrictive than regression models. Hence, for our study, we decided to apply the latter, even at the cost of intuiting that the results were not going to be as appropriate and remarkable as if we had applied the model of structural equations.

 

Thanks

We greatly appreciate the suggestions you have given us and we hope to have shown you that, to a greater or lesser extent, our work can contribute to the prior literature on this subject. Your comments have helped us to improve our work.

 

 

           

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Title – this does not encompass the full detail of data collected in relation to satisfaction and commitment.

Abstract.

Lines13-14 - The category titles on are somewhat confusing, Junior and Juvenile are the same thing. It might be better to state women rather than feminine, as this too can be misconstrued.

Lines 17-21 – The reporting of findings in the abstract could be supported through the key stats or mean values alluded to. The final sentence of the abstract could be a key point for discussion, has the purpose of the study been supported and how could this information be used by soccer coaches?

 

Introduction/literature review.

Line 31 – It would be good to identify the type of leadership theory which this study is based on, for example Chelladurai and Carron’s work or the transformational leadership terminology used in today’s climate. Much of the English literature used is quite old and I wonder if it reflects current thinking in terms of coaching and leadership.

Lines 93-96 – it might be pertinent here to include an element of application here perhaps relating these factors to subsequent performance.

Method

Participants.

Lines 99-101 – in this section the feminine category has been appropriately labelled, female. Perhaps a break down of age ranges of each category or an explanation of cadet, juvenile and junior would be good to show the differences as these are not clear and thus not replicable.  

Line 102 – need to use similar terminology, e.g. trained by, instead use coached by.

Line 104 – the generic experience and levelness information does not help identify the differences between the categories of players in their sample groups.

Line 108 – was the sample population taken from one club? This should be made clear here.

Line 164 – rather than refused (they have the right to refuse participation), perhaps declined to participate would better encapsulate the voluntary nature of the study.

Line 167 – perhaps use distributed rather than applied as this detracts from the voluntariness of the study.

Line 173 – here the values for alpha co-efficients should be reported for the measures.

Line 183-193 not sure that correlating the subscales of the LSS with each other shows anything. Perhaps leave this to the table for reader interpretation rather than list it here as this has hidden the correlation with motivational climate subscales which is the main purpose of the work.

Lines 194-202 in this section indicating that whilst there is a relationship, it is only a small to medium one in many cases. Sometimes p values are reported with the r values and this should be more consistent.

Line 203 – refer the reader to table 2.

Conclusions.

Line 216 – not sure the term here should be ‘habitual’ the study has only measured at one time point. Perhaps common behaviours would be a better replacement.

Line 223 – replace dialoguing environment with communicative environment.

Lines 225-228 offer some further insight here. What implications might this have in terms of understanding the performance environment?

 

General comments.

It seemed that different terminology was used throughout the work, in the conclusion section there were some assumptions about team work and communication which were not measured. If these assumptions derive from task-oriented motivational climate and supporting theory, this link should be made more clear.

It is unclear how the research is adding to known literature. However, on reflection if this is research at a recreational level, which can be sparse, then this fact should be more effectively highlighted throughout the work and become a focus of the writing.

Author Response

 

Reviewer Response 3

 

Dear Doctor:

We appreciate the review you have carried out and the comments you have made in this regard, which will surely help to improve our work.

Below, we respond to each comment, trusting that the deficiencies found are now corrected.

Cordial regards,

The authors

 

Title – this does not encompass the full detail of data collected in relation to satisfaction and commitment.

 “Leadership and motivational climate: relationship with objectives, commitment and satisfaction in base soccer players”.

 

Abstract.

Lines13-14 - The category titles on are somewhat confusing, Junior and Juvenile are the same thing. It might be better to state women rather than feminine, as this too can be misconstrued.

True, this is due to the translation to Spanish. The correct wording and following the soccer denominations would be:

 “participants were a sample of 151 players, aged between 10 and 24 years, divided into five categories: Alevín, Infantil, Cadets, Female, and Juvenile, all belonging to the Aragonese Football Federation”.

Lines 17-21 – The reporting of findings in the abstract could be supported through the key stats or mean values alluded to.

The results show that leadership styles based on Training and Instruction (M = 3.98, SD =. 43) and Positive Feedback (M= 4.02, SD = 0.53) are the most valued by the players in all categories. The Training and Instruction leadership style had the highest correlations with task-oriented motivational climate (r = .40). The findings of the regression analysis show that the Training and Instruction style and the task-oriented motivational climate significantly predict players' satisfaction (13.3%) and sport commitment (14.5%). 

 

The final sentence of the abstract could be a key point for discussion, has the purpose of the study been supported and how could this information be used by soccer coaches?

 

Lines 262-270: "The objective of effective leadership is to create and develop a climate within the organization or team to achieve the desired performance and satisfaction expected by each of the team members. Based on the results obtained, we encourage parents, coaches and sports technicians to instill in young athletes values based on effort, work, cooperation, and support, thereby creating in the group a climate that favors communication and a good feeling among the team members, and to reject individualistic behaviors seeking personal recognition and satisfaction at the expense of teamwork. Those responsible for the instruction of young athletes should be flexible in adopting the appropriate leadership style for each situation and developing the team's own culture, which unites all the members around the same goals.”

 

 Introduction/literature review.

Line 31 – It would be good to identify the type of leadership theory which this study is based on, for example Chelladurai and Carron’s work or the transformational leadership terminology used in today’s climate. Much of the English literature used is quite old and I wonder if it reflects current thinking in terms of coaching and leadership.

Line 31: following the approach of the multidimensional model of Chelladurai, the most widely applied to sports as it was fully developed within the sporting context, we consider that leadership is very relevant in sports teams because the team members must work together to achieve their goals.

 

Responding to your doubt about whether the old English literature used in this study reflects the current thinking in terms of Training and Leadership, the aforementioned literature, as reflected in the studies (Chelladurai, P., Saleh, S.D. 1980),  (Duda, J. L., & Nicholls, J. G., 1992), (Chelladurai, P., & Saleh, S. D., 1978; Chelladurai, P., & Carron, A. V.,1983; Terry, P. C., & Howe, B. L., 1984), was developed entirely in sports contexts, which is what interested us in this study, and is based on the multidimensional model of Chelladurai, so we think it is necessary to mention it.  However, more up-to-date English literature on these variables is also mentioned, for example: Duda, J.L.; Balaguer, I. Coach-created motivational climate. In Social Psychology in Sport; Jowet, S., Lavallee, D., Eds.; Human Kinetics: Champaign, Illinois, USA, 2007; Balaguer, I., Castillo, I., Moreno, Y., Garrigues, V., Soriano, L. , 2004; Balaguer, I., Guivernau, M., Duda, J., & Crespo, M., 2007; Lameiras, J., Martins, B., Lopes-De-Almeida, P., & García-Mas, A., 2017; Fletcher, R. B. & Roberts, M. H., 2013.

 

Lines 93-96 – it might be pertinent here to include an element of application here perhaps relating these factors to subsequent performance.

Lines 94-99 - Based on the literature reviewed herein (Multidimensional Model of Leadership in sports; (Chelladurai, Saleh, 1980; Álvarez, Castillo, Falcó, 2010; Ruiz-Barquín, Vega-Marcos, 2015), and  from the socio-cognitive theory of Meta-perspectives Theory of Meta-perspectives (Duda, Balaguer, 2007; Balaguer, Guivernau, Duda and Crespo, 2007), the hypotheses of this study are: H(1) players would prefer Democratic Leadership and Social Support styles and reject Autocratic Behaviors. H(2) Players' preferences for the perceived leadership style and motivational climate will positively predict their goals, degree of commitment, and satisfaction in the sporting environment.

Method

Participants.

Lines 99-101 – in this section the feminine category has been appropriately labelled, female. Perhaps a break down of age ranges of each category or an explanation of cadet, juvenile and junior would be good to show the differences as these are not clear and thus not replicable.  

Indeed, it is a problem of translation into English, following the proper soccer names, the real categories are:

Juvenile (+ 16 years)

Cadet (14-16 years)

Female (+ 14 years)

Infantil (12-14 years old)

Alevín (10-12 years)

Please, see lines 102-104

Line 102 – need to use similar terminology, e.g. trained by, instead use coached by.

Perhaps to avoid confusion, we could state it as: Lines 104-105 -"All the players are male, except the players of the female and infantil's teams, which are mixed. All the teams are trained by male personnel”.

Line 104 – the generic experience and levelness information does not help identify the differences between the categories of players in their sample groups.

Line 107 -referring to our previous answer on how players are divided according to their soccer categories and therefore, according to their age, we have calculated the educational level of the total sample of players. 56.95% study Compulsory Secondary Education, 21.85% study High School, 11.92% study Primary Education, 4.64% are enrolled in university studies, 2.65% study middle-level Vocational Training, 0.66% higher level Vocational Training, and 1.32% are not studying at this time.

To indicate some references, in Spain, which is where this study was performed, the educational categories are as follows:

Primary Education: 6 – 12 Years

Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE): 12-16 years

After finishing CSE, students can choose to follow their training in:

High School: 16-18 years, following a curricular itinerary to access the university.

Middle level Vocational Training: 16-18 years, with curricular itinerary oriented to a more professional area (electricity, mechanics, administration-secretarial…)

Second level Vocational Training, as of 18 years, they can access this formation if they have the qualification of middle level vocational training or high school.

Therefore, we believed it more pertinent for our study to offer this information about the players' global studies; for example, all members of the Junior team, because of their age, are studying Primary Education, the Children's team are studying Secondary Education. In the rest of the teams, there may be other options, as mentioned (High school, Middle or Higher Vocational Training). We do not think it would be appropriate to perform these calculations team by team.

Line 108 – was the sample population taken from one club? This should be made clear here.

The answer to this question is in lines 156-158. “The participants of this study are part of the two sports organizations of base soccer of the population of Calatayud (Zaragoza), all the players are registered in the Aragonese Football Federation and duly federated in their respective categories”.

Line 164 – rather than refused (they have the right to refuse participation), perhaps declined to participate would better encapsulate the voluntary nature of the study.

Line 168 - “About 10% of the players refused to participate in this voluntary study. We also excluded those who, having expressed their intention to participate in the study, did not provide their parents' duly completed  and signed informational consent”.

Line 167 – perhaps use distributed rather than applied as this detracts from the voluntariness of the study.

Line 170 - “The questionnaire was filled out by the participants in the club facilities”.

Line 173: The values of the alpha coefficients for measurements must be reported here.

Lines 176–179 -A descriptive analysis of the scales was performed, the Cronbach alpha of each of them was obtained: Leadership (α = .81), Task Climate (α = .89), Ego climate (α = .73), Satisfaction (α = .78), Degree of Commitment (α = .78), Sport Objectives (α = .91), and the correlations between the dimensions of the different study variables were calculated.

Line 183-193 not sure that correlating the subscales of the LSS with each other shows anything. Perhaps leave this to the table for reader interpretation rather than list it here as this has hidden the correlation with motivational climate subscales which is the main purpose of the work.

Lines 187-197 - As can be seen in Table 1, all styles correlated significantly with each other except for autocratic behavior. The highest correlations were observed between Training and Instruction and Positive Feedback (r = .54), Training and Instruction and Democratic Behavior (r = .46), Social Support and Positive Feedback (r = .39), and  Training and Instruction and Social Support (r = .38). There were also significant correlations between Democratic Behavior and Social Support (r = .33) and between Democratic Behavior and Positive Feedback (r = .34).  On the other hand, the coaches' democratic and autocratic behaviors correlated with each other (r = .10) although this correlation did not reach statistical significance.

The task-oriented motivational climate was positively related to the leadership styles of Training and Instruction (r = .40), Democratic behavior(r = .25), Social support (r = .38) and Positive Feedback (r = .26), whereas Autocratic Behavior had a negative and significant relationship with this motivational climate (r = .40).

 

 

Lines 194-202 in this section indicating that whilst there is a relationship, it is only a small to medium one in many cases. Sometimes p values are reported with the r values and this should be more consistent.

Lines 198-206 -The results show that the leadership styles perceived by the players were positively and significantly related to their satisfaction in the sporting environment, Training and Instruction (r = .31), Social Support (r = .22) and Positive Feedback (r = .23). The relationship between Democratic Behavior and Satisfaction did not reach statistical significance, whereas Autocratic Behavior showed a negative correlation with Satisfaction (r = -.18).

Indeed the p-values should not be reported together with the r- values in these lines, to follow the same criterion.

Line 203 – refer the reader to table 2.

Line 207 -The results of stepwise multiple linear regression analyses (see Table 2) supported the proposed hypotheses.

Conclusions.

Line 216 – not sure the term here should be ‘habitual’ the study has only measured at one time point. Perhaps common behaviours would be a better replacement.

This may be a mistaken nuance of the translation into English; as you indicate, we were referring to common behaviors. You will understand that the Spanish language has many synonyms, and the meaning that was given in the translation may not have been the correct one.

Line 223 – replace dialoguing environment with communicative environment.

Line 226 -We accept your suggestion to change the term of dialogue to Communicactive environment, but we refer to the answer we provided in the previous question.

Lines 225-228 offer some further insight here. What implications might this have in terms of understanding the performance environment?

What we wanted to say in these lines is that we have not found significant correlations between the leadership style of Training and Instruction and Democratic Behavior, an aspect that has been found by other authors in other studies.

As Training and Instruction, along with Positive Feedback , are the behaviors preferred by the players in our study, and they are also the ones that obtain highest correlations with the players' Satisfaction, we think that these styles can lead to a better performance for athletes because they are the most satisfying behaviors when practicing sport.

Hence, democratic behavior, which implies that athletes participate in decision-making about group goals, and in the methods of training and tactics and group strategies, in the case of our players, does not lead them to maximize their performance, in contrast to previous studies carried out.

However, in the present study, at no time have we tried to measure performance objectively, but to understand some of the possible variables involved in players' performance, which can help them achieve it.

 

Comentarios generales

With the above modifications, following your advice, we believe that we have corrected the use of different terminologies throughout the work and extended the section of conclusions with the corresponding correlation coefficients that were previously omitted.

What we intended with this work was to find some of the possible variables that make young people aged 10 to 20 years devote a considerable part of their time to the practice of sports, in this case soccer, instead of dedicating it to other leisure activities that are more pleasant or do not oblige them to devote and spend as much time, for instance, going to the movies, going out with friends, playing with a play station…

These young people spend two hours, three times a week, on training with their teams, in addition to playing the corresponding league game on Saturday, with the corresponding trips to the place where they play, which can be over 200 miles. These training sessions take place in the afternoon and not only involve the two hours the athletes must remain on the playing field but also the time spent to get to the premises, change in the dressing room and after training, shower, change their clothes again, and return to their homes. After these training sessions, they must spend time on school homework, prepare exams and the other obligations that they have as students. We should add that many of them also attend other extracurricular activities such as English classes, music classes, etc.

So from the start, we think that the practice of their favorite sport, soccer, should be an activity that satisfies them; otherwise, they would stop practicing. At the same time, and that is why we have included these variables, we think that, in addition to satisfaction that these young athletes may or may not feel, there must be other reasons, such as the sport commitment they acquire when registering at the Club and committing to play and train throughout the season and to participate in the competitions that these clubs organize as well as the objectives that lead them to continue practicing this sport.

As we have seen and mentioned in this research, we have reviewed previous articles on these topics (Leadership, Motivational Climate, Satisfaction, Commitment, Objectives), we have found that there are some that are based on the relationships between, for example, Leadership and players' Satisfaction; Leadership and Motivational Climate in sports teams; Motivational Climate and players’ Satisfaction, but we have not found in the reviewed literature any study that includes all these variables as a whole. Therefore, from our point of view, we think that our study is contributing a grain of sand to the already known literature.

Thanks

We hope that throughout these lines, we have clarified some of the concepts that may have been unclear. Your comments have been very valuable for us and have helped to improve our study so we express our sincere thanks to you for your review.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors improved the manuscript according with my recommendations.

Reviewer 2 Report

Although I do not agree with some of the authors' answers, seeing the answers to other reviewers and the changes made to the paper, I consider that the article has improved and is of sufficient quality to be published in the journal.
It is also to value the effort made by the authors to improve the article.
Good luck