Expectancy theorists contend that coaches utilize a variety of impression cues for information-gathering tasks. The purpose of this study was to examine college coaches' perceptions of athletes by exploring the sources that coaches use to assess athlete achievement. Eighteen NCAA Division intercollegiate head coaches participated in semi-structured interviews. An inductive/deductive content analysis revealed the existence of six expectancy dimensions for coaches: personality, performance, personal, cognitive, mistakes, and knowledge from others. The most salient dimensions were personality and performance cues comprising 42% and 32% of the raw data quotes respectively. Team and individual sport coaches agreed that work ethic and motor skills were very important, whereas they differed on the importance of team qualities, mental strategy and sport-specific skills. Future research directions include the creation of a quantitative assessment tool to access sources of expectancy information among college coaches and intervention techniques useful in the sport setting.
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