The Effects of Different Types of Feedback on Dancers in Competitions, a Content Analysis

Dance teachers have used various coaching techniques on competitive dancers, specifically involving positive and negative feedback, which affects dancers’ performances and how they score in competitions. Current knowledge focuses on how dancers receive positive and negative feedback psychologically, however, there is no current research evaluating the relationship between the amount of types of feedback given to dancers with the placement of the performance in a competition. This gap leads to the question: How does the amount of positive and negative feedback given to a dancer affect the placement of the dancer’s performance in the results of a competition, as depicted on the reality television show, ‘Dance Moms’? This study implements a content analysis method of the television show Dance Moms to determine how the amounts of positive and negative feedback with respect to the total amount of feedback a coach gives affects the placement of that dance at competition. My results demonstrate that dances which receive greater amounts of positive or negative feedback place better at competition than dances which receive about equal amounts of feedback types. Additionally, dances that receive more feedback tend to score better than those which receive less. Therefore, I filled a knowledge gap surrounding the effects of feedback on dancers, establishing a starting point for coaches and future researchers to better understand how dancers are affected by feedback. Future research can be conducted on larger groups of dancers using my same criteria to classify feedback types in order to expand upon my results.