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Little League Baseball coaches were exposed to a preseason training program designed to assist them in relating more effectively to children. Empirically derived behavioral guidelines were presented and modeled, and behavioral feedback and self-monitoring were used to enhance self-awareness and to encourage compliance with the guidelines. Trained coaches differed from controls in both overt and player-perceived behaviors in a manner consistent with the behavioral guidelines. They were also evaluated more positively by their players, and a higher level of intrateam attraction was found on their teams despite the fact that they did not differ from controls in won-lost records. Children who played for the trained coaches exhibited a significant increase in general self-esteem compared with scores obtained a year earlier; control group children did not. The greatest differences in attitudes toward trained and control coaches were found among children low in self-esteem, and such children appeared most sensitive to variations in coaches' use of encouragement, punishment, and technical instruction.

This article describes the development and validation of the Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2), a multidimensional measure of cognitive and somatic trait anxiety in sport performance settings. Scale development was stimulated by findings that the 3-factor structure of the original Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS; Smith, Smoll, & Schutz, 1990) could not be reproduced in child samples and that several items on the scale produced conflicting factor loadings in adult samples. Alternative items having readability levels of grade 4 or below were therefore written to create a new version suitable for both children and adults. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses replicated the original SAS factor structure at all age levels, yielding separate 5-item subscales for Somatic Anxiety, Worry, and Concentration Disruption in samples as young as 9 to 10 years of age. The SAS-2 has stronger factorial validity than the original scale did, and construct validity research indicates that scores relate to other psychological measures as expected. The scale reliably predicts precompetition state anxiety scores and proved sensitive to anxiety-reduction interventions directed at youth sport coaches and parents.