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The purpose of the present investigation was to determine the relationship between competitive trait anxiety (CTA), state anxiety, and golf performance in a field setting. Ten low, moderate, and high CTA collegiate golfers (N = 30) performed in a practice round on Day 1 and Day 2 of a competitive tournament. State anxiety results indicated a significant CTA main effect with low CTA subjects displaying lower state anxiety than moderate or high CTA subjects. The competition main effect was also significant, with post hoc tests indicating higher levels of state anxiety during Day 1 and Day 2 than during the practice round. Performance results produced a significant CTA main effect with low CTA subjects displaying higher levels of performance than moderate or high CTA subjects. Correlations between SCAT and state anxiety indicated that SCAT was a good predictor of precompetitive state anxiety. The direction of state anxiety and performance CTA main effects provide support for Oxendine's (1970) contentions that sports requiring fine muscle coordination and precision (e.g., golf) are performed best at low levels of anxiety. Future directions for research are offered.

The literature on burnout has concentrated on the human service and helping professions, although recently some researchers have investigated the burnout phenomenon in sport. The present investigation focused on high school and college head coaches to determine if burnout is related to leadership style. Subjects (N=302) were high school coaches from Texas and college coaches from the Southwest and Southeast Conferences. Coaches completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), Social Desirability Scale (SDS), and a demographic data sheet. A MANOVA indicated a significant relationship between burnout and leadership style in four of the six subscales of the MBI. Specificially, coaches who displayed a consideration style of leadership behavior scored significantly higher in the frequency and intensity dimensions of the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization subscales. In addition, a significant gender difference revealed that male coaches scored higher in both the frequency and intensity dimensions of the depersonalization subscales. Results are discussed in terms of leadership theory, and practical implications are offered for reducing burnout in coaches.

Two studies were conducted to examine antecedents of, relationships between, and temporal changes in the cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and the self-confidence components of the Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, and Smith (1983) newly developed Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2). In addition, the prediction that cognitive and somatic anxiety should differentially influence performance was examined. In Study 1, 37 elite intercollegiate wrestlers were administered the CSAI-2 immediately before two different competitions, whereas in Study 2, 63 female high school volleyball players completed the CSAI-2 on five different occasions (1 week, 48 hrs, 24 hrs, 2 hrs, and 20 min) prior to a major tournament. The results were analyzed using multiple regression, multivariate multiple regression, univariate and multivariate analyses of variance, and general linear model trend analysis techniques. The findings supported the scale development work of Martens and his colleagues by verifying that the CSAI-2 assesses three separate components of state anxiety. A number of other important findings also emerged. First, the prediction was confirmed that somatic anxiety increases during the time leading to competition, while cognitive anxiety and confidence remain constant. Second, CSAI-2 subscales were found to have different antecedents, although the precise predictions of Martens and his colleagues were not supported. Third, the prediction that cognitive anxiety would be a more powerful predictor of performance than somatic anxiety was only partially supported. Fourth, the prediction that precompetitive anxiety differences between experienced and inexperienced athletes initially found by Fenz (1975) result from somatic anxiety changes was not supported. It was concluded that the CSAI-2 shows much promise as a multidimensional sport-specific state anxiety inventory, although more research is needed to determine how and why specific antecedent factors influence various CSAI-2 components and to examine the predicted relationships between CSAI-2 components and performance.

The present investigation was designed to extend Weinberg, Gould, and Jackson's (1979) efficacy-performance results to a back-to-back competitive situation as well as to determine whether performance would be affected by the solicitation of public vs. private expectancy statements. Subjects (56 males and 56 females) were randomly assigned to either a high or low self-efficacy condition and either stated their expectancy of success publicly or privately in a 2 × 2 × 2 (sex × self-efficacy × publiclprivate) factorial design. Self-efficacy was manipulated by having subjects compete against a confederate on a muscular leg-endurance task in which the confederate was said to be either a varsity track athlete who exhibited higher performance on a related task (low self-efficacy), or an individual who had a knee injury and exhibited poorer performance on a related task (high self-efficacy). The results supported self-efficacy predictions, and thus extended Weinberg et al.'s findings to a back-to-back competitive situation. The public/private manipulation produced no significant performance effects. In addition, the sex by self-efficacy interaction indicated that the self-efficacy main effect was due primarily to high-efficacy males extending their legs significantly longer than low-efficacy males. These results are discussed in terms of the differing patterns of sex-role socialization.

The purposes of the present investigation were to examine the coping responses of different subgroups of athletes (e.g., high and low trait anxious athletes), and to assess the consistency of athlete’s coping behaviors across situations. Two-hundred and seventy-three athletes completed the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) by Smith, Smoll, & Schutz (1990) and coping assessments in trait and state versions of the sport adapted COPE (MCOPE) by Crocker and Graham (1995). The state coping measures assessed coping responses of situations for which the athletes actually experienced. The results of three separate, doubly multivariate, repeated measures, MANOVA’s showed that high trait anxious athletes responded to stressful situations using different coping behaviors (e.g., denial, wishful thinking, and self-blame) than the low trait anxious athletes. In addition, coping appears to be more stable than situationally variable as Pearson correlational coefficients computed between the three measures ranged from 0.53 to 0.80. The results are discussed with regard to theoretical, research, and applied issues.

This study investigated the effects of different goal and feedback conditions on performance of a basketball shooting task and a more complex one-on-one offensive basketball task. Subjects (N= 1(D) were matched, based on pretest performance, into one of five conditions: competitive goal, cooperative goal, mastery goal, "do your best" with feedback, and "do your best" without feedback. Subjects also responded to questionnaires to allow an assessment of the strength of mastery, competitive, and social goal orientations, which reflected personal achievement goals held before goal-setting instructions were offered. Results indicated that the competitive goal group performed significantly better than the do-your-best-without-feedback group in one-on-one posttest trials. No other between-group performance differences were significant. Subjects' goal orientations were not related to performance in the competitive and cooperative goal conditions, but significant relationships were found for mastery goal group subjects. The results are discussed in terms of Locke's theory of goal setting as well as achievement motivation research on goal orientations, and future directions for research are offered.

The purpose of this investigation was to test Kukla's attributional theory of performance and to address the mediating link between causal attribution and subsequent action in a competitive motor task. Two experiments were conducted: the first was designed to determine the effect of perceived task difficulty and attributional instructions on the ball-tossing performance of high achievers while competing against a standard of excellence. Results indicated that high achievers performed with greater intensity when receiving an effort rather than ability-oriented instructional set and when they perceive themselves to be behind a normative score of their classmates. To refine and clarify results found in Experiment 1, low as well as high achievers were added to the second study and were placed in face-to-face competition instead of a competition against a standard of excellence. Results from the performance data in Experiment 2 supported Kukla's theory in that high achievers performed best when they perceived themselves to be behind an opponent's score midway through the experiment, whereas low achievers performed best when they perceived themselves to be ahead. Results from the cognitive assessment procedure, however, failed to support the performance findings. Implications for the viability of Kukla's attributional theory of performance and problems related to the assessment of cognitive states are discussed.