Abstract
The aim of the study was to develop and validate questionnaires to evaluate stressors,
well-being and social support among South African sports coaches. The results
uncovered weak correlations between Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) results and two
dimensions of the Stressors in Sports Coaching Questionnaire (i.e., SSCQ; performance
and task-related stressors). A moderate relationship was observed between perceived
stress and athlete stressors. Only environmental stressors showed a strong correlation
with higher perceived stress. In short, small, moderate, and large relationships were all
found between stress as measured by the PSS and various dimensions of SSCQ. The
study’s findings indicate that the SSCQ could be a useful instrument for evaluating
stressors among South African sports coaches. The creation and validation of the Social
Support Scale for Coaches involved four stages: a literature review, content validation,
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and reliability testing. The PCA showed that the
data was suitable as all factor loadings were greater than 0.30 and the Kaiser-Meyer-
Olkin value was higher than 0.60. Furthermore, the factorability of the correlation
matrix was supported by the statistical significance of Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity. The
overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the SSSC was above 0.70, demonstrating that
the questionnaire was reliable.