Development of general expertise factor and analysis of its relation to decision-making behavior of gymnastics coaches.

Introduction: Coaches may be regarded as highly qualified professionals in elite sport, possessing extended experiences, specialized tertiary education and domain-specific credentials, which designate them as experts in their particular sport discipline. They are a central figure in the development of an athlete's results. In the present study, we developed the concept of the General Expertise Factor (GEF) and investigated the associations between the level of expertise of gymnastics coaches and certain demographic and professional characteristics, as well as their decision-making (hereinafter DM) behavior. Methods: To reveal the structure of the DM style, a general DM style questionnaire was used, to which questions on the demographic and professional characteristics were added. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to identify the correlations, and multiple regression analysis was employed to examine causal associations between measured parameters. In addition, ANOVA was used to detect differences in all measured parameters between groups of coaches defined according to different expertise criterions. Results: The results indicated that development of GEF is based on the premise that expertise in a particular field is multidimensional, whereby dimensions or criterions of domain-specific explicit knowledge, experience, and confirmed results must be simultaneously achieved for an individual coach to be recognized as an expert of the highest rank. Statistically significant differences between individual expert groups of coaches were found for all three selected expertise criteria. Moreover, the comparation of the resulting quality groups of coaches according to their average DM behavior reviled that the groups differ significantly in the use of rational DM style, with rationality in DM consistently increasing in line with the increasing competence or expertise of the representatives of each quality group. Conclusions: Based on the findings we can conclude that the developed GEF well stratifies gymnastics coaches into different levels of competence and expertise and that rationality is one of the important factors that, together with knowledge, experience and achieved success, represents a defining element of coaching expertise. The developed GEF model was also checked for compliance with other, already established theories and models in the fields of expertise and DM, where a high level of consistency was found.