ABSTRACT
Assessment has not been a ‘hot topic’ amongst coaches nor has it had mass appeal amongst the coaching science research community. According to the annotated bibliography compiled by Gilbert (2002), only 4 per cent of articles in the coaching science literature have focused on assessment. When a review of the assessment articles was undertaken it was clear that the focus of many of them was on the coach’s behaviour, with researchers using quantitative assessment tools to assess the behaviour (see for example Côté et al. 1999; Cunningham et al. 2001). However, since the late 1990s some researchers have begun to use mixed methods, utilizing interviews as well as systematic observation systems or questionnaires to understand the assessment process in coaching (see DeMarco et al. 1997; Gilbert et al. 1999). On the odd occasion when athletes have been the focus of the research, they have been asked to complete an athlete satisfaction questionnaire (see Riemer and Chelladurai 1998). A consequence of this research agenda is that the focus is once again on the coaches’ behaviour. Interestingly, Gilbert (2002) grouped the articles that focused on the evaluation of coach education programmes (see for example Gilbert and Trudel 1999; MacLean and Zakrajsek 1996) under the assessment coaching theme. But as we will discuss below, the terms assessment and evaluation are not synonymous, nor is evaluation a sub-set of assessment.
