Anxiety In Sports Psychology

Anxiety continues to a focus of research in sports psychology. The issue in this study involving anxiety is the physical and physiological affects it can have on an individual’s performance ability. In order to understand anxiety people must understand the factors that can lead to or increase an individual’s anxiety. For this study researchers used a methodological approach system, which purposed research focused on examining the mediating role of coping strategies. They evaluated coping strategies by comparing participant’s achievement goals and their outcome results. The purpose of this study was to further evaluate and determine the mediating role of individuals coping strategies by comparing their goal orientation and competitive anxiety.

The athletes were all members of Romanian Handball or Volleyball Federation. The members were required to have participated in a minimum of one national competition in their athletic career. The elite athletes ages ranged from 13 to 19 years old and had an average age of 16 years old. Before beginning the research study the participants were informed that their involvement would remain confidential. Also, for those who were under the age of 18 years old had to receive parental consent in order to become involved in the study. The evaluation and data collection was completed throughout the athlete’s competition period. The questionnaires that were also a part of the evaluation were completed at the start of their workout session and lasted about 20-30 minutes. The instruments they used for this study involved coping inventory for competitive sports, which measures 10 different coping strategies that are often used by athletes during their performance or competition. The types of coping methods that they evaluated in athletes involved, “task-orientated coping, disengagement coping and distraction orientated coping”(****). Throughout their research they looked for different variables that may be affecting the athletes performance such as perceived control which requires visualization techniques and self efficacy which is the belief in ones capabilities to perform (****). If the athlete scored a “1 then that meant their results do not correspond in any way with what I did or thought, and if they scored a 5 that meant corresponds very strongly with what I did or thought). For this study we used the adapted version of the scale on Romanian population”