FACTA UNIVERSITATIS Series: Physical Education and Sport, Vol. 18, No 2, 2020, pp. 431 - 438 https://doi.org/10.22190/FUPES180831040D © 2020 by University of Niš, Serbia | Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND Research article PERCEPTION OF COHESION IN INTERACTIVE SPORTS TEAMS UDC 796.035:316.7 Gordana Dobrijević 1 , Jelena orđević Boljanović 1 , Slavko Alčaković 1 , Snežana Lazarević 2 1 Faculty of Physical Culture and Sports Management, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia 2 College of Sports and Health, Belgrade, Serbia Abstract. The aim of this study is to examine the perception of cohesion in highly interdependent sports teams, compare cohesion in different sports, and then compare social and task cohesion. The participants were 205 professional sports players in the city of Belgrade, Serbia. They are engaged in five different sports: Football/soccer, basketball, volleyball, handball, and water polo. The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) was used to collect the data. All the analyses were carried out with the SPSS 22 statistical software. The results have shown moderately-high levels of all four aspects of cohesion (Group Integration-Task, Group Integration-Social, Individual Attractions to the Group-Task, and Individual Attractions to the Group-Social) in all sports. Overall, perception of task cohesion is higher than perception of social cohesion. The study also reveals that the type of sport played impacts the level of cohesion, with basketball players having the highest scores of all. Key words: Sports Teams, Interactive Sports, Cohesion, Group Environment Questionnaire INTRODUCTION Over the past decades, cohesion has been one of the most studied group characteristics (Widmeyer & Williams, 1991; Carron, Colman, Wheeler, & Stevens, 2002; Sabin & Marcel, 2014). In sport studies, the most widely used definition of cohesion is that of Carron, Brawley, and Widmeyer (1998): Group cohesion is “a dynamic process reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs” (p. 213). Cohesion is one of the four most important motivational mechanisms in a team, together Received August 31, 2020 / Accepted September 10, 2020 Corresponding author: Gordana Dobrijević Faculty of Physical Culture and Sports Management, Singidunum University, Danijelova 32, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia Phone: + 381 11 3094 094 • E-mail: gdobrijevic@singidunum.ac.rs