Mark H. Anshel and Toto Sutarso. (2007). Psychology of Sport and Exercise Relationships between sources of acute stress and athletes’ coping style in competitive sport as a function of gender. Volume 8, Issue 1, January 2007, Pages 1-24 The participants in this study were former athletes or current competitors for their college sports team. There were 176 males and 156 females ranging in age from 18 to 23 years old with an average age of 21. 6. These athletes were undergraduates from a university located in the southeast United States, and had majors in health and physical education.
One most important criteria for participates in the experiment was that each individual had be competing on his or her college sports team, not just participating in recreational sport. The criterion of this study does not include the skill level for the athletes. The participants in this experiment had to go through a procedure with two different parts. For the first part, the athletes were asked to record their perceived stress level or common source of acute stress. In the second part athletes were asked how they cope with their two most acute forms of stress.
The athletes were administered the experiment before a practice session. The categories of acute stress sources were labeled “performance-related” and “coach-related,” and coping styles’ were grouped as “approach-behavioral,” “approach-cognitive,” and “avoidance-cognitive. ” Another procedure was the three-factor model. This model analyzed and tested the variability of the athletes’ source of acute stress scale and their coping style scale. The first factor was the “number of underlying factors and their respective items constructed for each factor. The second was the “item measurements, or factor loadings (metric invariance).
” The third “maintained equality constraint on the factor loadings, and constrained all factor covariances to be gender invariant. ” This experiment was conducted to determine the relationship between the sources of acute stress and their coping styles. Also, is to determine “athletes’ sources of acute stress experienced during the competitive event that male and female athletes perceived as highly intense, their respective coping styles, the relationship between the acute stressors and their coping styles, and the generalizability of the stressors and coping styles as a function of gender.
” This study was conducted because the researchers wanted find out how an athlete’s performance was affected by stress and how they cope with it. This experiment was set up to “determine the extent to which the athletes’ coping style can be predicted. ” The experimenters’ predictions were that “highly intense sources of acute stress would be significantly related to the athlete’s respective coping style, depicted as approach and avoidance, and that these relationships would be a function of gender.
” Also, that ineffective coping with sources of acute stress will be damaging to both the performance and satisfaction of the competitors. In addition, the researchers wanted “to ascertain the extent to which athletes’ coping style was consistent between categories of stressors. ” The outcome of this experiment showed that general coping styles are significantly related to general sources of acute stress. The hypothesis of this study provided results that are partially supported.
The models showed that the athletes’ coping styles were related to their respective sources of acute stress category. The results of the three-factor analyses revealed valid relationships between coping styles and sources of acute stress among the athletes. The results from the experiment also indicate that “athletes who experienced intense coach-related acute stress was more likely to use an approach-behavior coping styles followed by the other coping styles.
” The athlete’s gender was a variable in determining coping styles in response to sources of acute stress. The models showed that athletes who experienced acute stress used their respective coping styles consistently. In addition, gender helps show the relationship between source of acute stress and successive use of coping styles. Another result is the high correlations between coping styles. This relationship confirms that, within the context of competitive sports, “coping is primarily a cognitive rather than a behavioral strategy.
” This study’s results applies to the real world by having advantages of identifying athletes’ coping style in reaction to categories is, sources of acute stress enhances self-regulation strategies, and decreases the amount of information in the coping process. Also, if a player can predict the coping style that player can adjust its behavior so there is a satisfactory outcome. In addition, if an opposing competitor can predict its opponents coping style, then the competitor can change its behavior to gain a favorable result.
I was a football player in high school so I can relate extremely easily to this experiment. After reading this article I was not shocked at the results. I wish I knew the information in this experiment, because I could better predict my own and my opponents coping style. This would facilitate me in being a more skillful competitor on the football field. Mark A. Eys, Todd M. Loughead, and James Hardy. (May 2007). Psychology of Sport and Exercise. Athlete leadership dispersion and satisfaction in interactive sport teams. Volume 8, Issue 3, Pages 281-296.
The participants of this experiment were 218 varsity student athletes from Canadian universities. There were 103 males and 115 females. The mean age of the participants was 20. 6 years. They represented various sports teams including soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, ice hockey, field hockey, rugby, and basketball. These participants were current members on their sport team for an average of 2. 13 years. The purpose of this study was to see what two part, the first was to see what an athletes thought process is and the second was to see if more leaders on a team is beneficial to the team.