Support Against Stress: How We Can Help Referees?

Abstract

The main purpose of this work was to explore whether there were differences in perceived sources of stress, precompetitive appraisal, emotions, coping strategies, and motivation of soccer referees, depending on the degree of perceived support by the refereeing organisation. The participants of our study were 548 soccer referees (M age = 22.46, DT = 5.95). Data were analyzed using ANOVA according to three groups defined by the degree of perceived support (i.e., low, medium, high). The results showed statistically significant differences between groups in terms of off-match stress, appraisal, emotions, task oriented coping, autonomous regulation and amotivation, highlighting the relationship between a supportive environment and positive outcomes such as less perceived stress, a challenge appraisal, positive emotions, task oriented coping strategies and intrinsic motivation. Thus, foster supportiveness policies by federations such as, helping on the conciliation between refereeing and life, transparency in promotion processes, and to provide resources to overcome the difficulties in refereeing could be a key element for the referees wellbeing.