Team Cooperation and Its Factors: A Confirmatory Analysis

Recently knowledge has been obtained about the Cooperative meta-dynamics in performance teams, and also on the fit between the manager’s and team member’s beliefs about teamwork and performance. To obtain this, a specific instrument has been created and validated, the Questionnaire on Cooperation in Performance Teams (CWQ). The need for such this kind of tool is double fold: first, to combine the most relevant conceptual theories in a short and friendly usable instrument, and to obtain easily applicable knowledge addressed to managers and coaches working with performance teams. In order to accomplish fully with this aim, a confirmatory analysis of the new instrument is required too. Consequently, the CWQ was administered to 218 players of performance sports teams (Mean age = 21.12; SD = 6.72; mean years of experience = 11.42; SD = 6.33). The data analysis consisted on the study of the main components (forcing and without forcing the number of factors), with a Varimax rotation. The results confirm the validation of the CWQ both for the “A” and “B” versions of the questionnaire and the existence of four meta-factors: 1. Global cooperation with the team; 2. Cooperation for personal growth in the team; 3. Emotional cooperation, and 4. Conditional cooperation. The four factors shown factorial weights similar to those obtained in the previous exploratory study. These data confirms its transcultural and transituational invariance of the CWQ, as along with its conceptual validity and the solid theoretical conception of the abovementioned factors, and also its applicability in various performance environments. In addition, a mathematical analysis has been introduced to evaluate the symmetry between cooperative work beliefs from both coach and player views, embedded in the conceptual framework of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory.