Attribution theory is one of the psychological dynamic theories that explains
and describes people's perception of facts. Therefore, the aim of this research was
to study success and failure attributions in athletes and coaches. The population of
this study consisted of athletes and coaches of national teams (elite) and club
teams (sub–elite) in swimming, badminton, karate, taekwondo, table tennis and
wrestling. 120 male players and 12 coaches were selected through multistage
convenience sampling method. Then, data were collected by attribution styles
questionnaire (ASQ). The data were analyzed by multivariate ANOVA at P˂0.05.
The findings showed that elite athletes expressed more unstable and specific
attributions in failure conditions. In contrast, sub–elite athletes expressed more
stable and general attributions in failure conditions (P≤0.0001). As well, the
coaches of elite athletes expressed more stable and specific attributions than the
coaches of sub–elite athletes in success dimension (P≤0.0001). The results showed
that the casual attribution of athletes (elite and sub-elite) and their coaches (elite
and sub-elite) expressed elite athletes and coaches' privilege as elite athletes
expressed that most of the reasons for their success were internal, stable and
general. Also, athletes and coaches stated different attributions in the same
situation. It is recommended that coaches encourage their athletes to attempt more
to express all of their competencies in the competitions.