Many competitive sport anxiety researchers have examined the degree to which athletes worry before or during competition. Little attention has been paid, however, to establishing a conceptual framework for structuring the content of competitive worry. The main purpose of this study was to examine the latent dimensionality of competitive worry in intercollegiate ice hockey (N= 178) using a conceptual framework based on two multidimensional anxiety theories developed by Endler (1983) and Hackfort (1986). Multidimensional scaling and factor-analytic results revealed that competitive worry in ice hockey can be structured around a combination of four potential content domains relating to athletes’ fear of failure, negative social evaluation, injury or physical danger, and the unknown. These constructs were congruent with the situational anxiety dimensions proposed by Endler and Hackfort. Discussion focuses on the characteristic features of the four worry domains and the extent to which athletes were predisposed to experiencing each type of worry.
Search Results
A Theoretical Framework for Structuring the Content of Competitive Worry in Ice Hockey
John G.H. Dunn
Worries and Fears Associated With Competitive Gymnastics
Scott B. Martin, Christy M. Polster, Allen W. Jackson, Christy A. Greenleaf, and Gretchen M. Jones
The purpose of this investigation was to explore the frequency and intensity of worries and fears associated with competitive gymnastics. These issues were initially examined in a sample of 7 female college gymnasts using a semistructured guided interview. From the themes that emerged and relevant literature, a survey including parallel intensity and frequency of worry questions was administered to 120 female gymnasts competing in USA Gymnastics sanctioned events. Results indicated that even though gymnasts worry about attempting and performing skills on the balance beam and uneven bars, more of them experienced a greater number of injuries on the floor exercise. Analysis of covariance for intensity and frequency using age as the covariate revealed that advanced gymnasts had more intense worries about body changes and performing skills and more frequent worries about body changes than less skilled gymnasts (p < .05). Advanced gymnasts also reported using more strategies to modify their worries than did less skilled gymnasts.
On the Swedish Road to Becoming a Professional Practitioner in Sport and Exercise Psychology: Students’ Views, Hopes, Dreams, and Worries
Urban Johnson and Mark Andersen
students who may become future specialists in SEP. The main goal of the present cohort-comparison study is to describe SEP undergraduate students’ current perceptions of the field and their hopes, dreams, and worries about the future as compared with previous cohorts 10 and 20 years ago (i.e., Johnson
Prevalence of COVID-19 Anxiety in Division I Student-Athletes
Victoria Sanborn, Lauren Todd, Hanna Schmetzer, Nasha Manitkul-Davis, John Updegraff, and John Gunstad
-athletes with canceled competitions may be experiencing less competition anxiety and/or COVID-19-related anxiety due to reduced external pressures. As no empirical work has examined student-athletes’ level of worry due to pandemic-related factors, the current study sought to better understand the prevalence of
Generalization in Sports: The Impact of How Athletes Process Their Failures and Successes
Jens Van Lier and Filip Raes
performances and their overall self-worth. One possible mechanism towards generalization might be the way athletes retrospectively process their failures or successes ( Van Lier, Moulds, & Raes, 2015 ; Watkins, 2008 ). In clinical settings, some forms of repetitive negative thinking such as worry and
Competence Perceptions and Sources of Worry in High, Medium, and Low Competitive Trait-Anxious Young Athletes
Robert Brustad and Maureen R. Weiss
This study examined the relationship between cognitive appraisal processes and the affective characteristics of youth sport involvement using Harter's competence motivation theory as a framework. Specifically, the present study extended Passer's (1983) research on patterns of competitive trait anxiety (CTA) in young male soccer players by including female athletes and athletes involved in different sports. Boy baseball players (N = 55) and girl softball players (N = 58) completed self-report measures of CTA, self-esteem, perceived physical competence, and frequency of evaluative and performance-related worries about athletic competition. Multivariate analyses revealed that high-CTA boys reported lower levels of self-esteem and more frequent worries about their performance than did their less anxious counterparts. For the girls, no significant relationships were found between levels of competitive trait anxiety and the cognitive variables. To enhance the experiences of youth sport participants, it is essential that the contributors to, and consequences of, competitive trait anxiety be more closely examined.
“I Do Worry That Football Will Become Over-Feminized”: Ambiguities in Fan Reflections on the Gender Order in Men’s Professional Football in the United Kingdom
Jamie Cleland, Stacey Pope, and John Williams
both players and fans: I’d prefer to see football kept as a traditional male sport. A number of the rule changes 4 over recent years and the continual attempts to limit physical contact seem to be geared to changing the game to make it a more suitable for women to participate in. I do worry that
Trait-State Anxiety, Worry, Emotionality, and Self-Confidence in Top-Level Soccer Players
František Man, Iva Stuchlíková, and Pavel Kindlmann
Spielberger’s trait-state anxiety theory suggests that persons high in trait anxiety have a greater tendency to perceive an ego-involving situation as threatening, and hence, they are expected to respond to this situation with elevated state anxiety (A-state). To test this hypothesis measurements of A-trait (low vs. high) as a between-subjects factor, measurements of stress level (low vs. high) as a within-subjects factor, and measurements of state anxiety, cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, self-confidence, and cognitive interference as dependent variables were made on 45 top-level soccer players. Statistical analysis revealed a significant person-situation interaction only in self-confidence. The lack of sensitivity in the state anxiety scores can be ascribed to the fact that soccer players play important games regularly and so become desensitized to precompetitive anxiety responses. A subsequent multiple regression analysis showed that task irrelevant cognitions are correlated only with cognitive anxiety and not with either self-confidence or somatic anxiety.
Getting Over the Worry Hurdle: Parental Encouragement and the Sports Involvement of Visually Impaired Children and Youths
Howard L. Nixon II
This paper addresses how parents encourage or discourage sports involvement by their visually impaired offspring, the types of sports involvement these children pursue, and the effects of parental encouragement on sports involvement. It analyzes new evidence from a study of parental adjustment to a visually impaired child. The evidence was derived mainly from open-ended, in-depth interviews of parents of 18 partially sighted and totally blind children who had attended public school. There were 15 mothers and 9 fathers in the 16 families who were interviewed, and 2 of the families had 2 visually impaired children. Additional data were provided through interviews with 14 professionals and volunteers from various fields who had sports-related experiences or observations of visually impaired children and their families. Four major forms of parental encouragement and discouragement were identified: strong encouragers, weak encouragers, tolerators, and discouragers. The predominance of the latter three helped explain the dominant patterns of limited involvement in sport by visually impaired children. Implications of these findings for mainstreaming and appropriate integration also are considered.
Physical Activity, Glycemic Variability, and Parental Hypoglycemia Fear in Preschoolers With Type 1 Diabetes
Susana R. Patton, Alexandra D. Monzon, Amy E. Noser, and Mark A. Clements
worry about a child hypoglycemic event, or the behaviors parents engage in to avoid a child hypoglycemic event. As per published recommendations ( 28 ), we scored parents’ HFS-PYC surveys based on the item means of the 2 subscale scores (ie, Worry and Behavior), with higher item means reflecting more
