1
SPORTS ANXIETY
THE EFFECTS OF A COMPETITIVE SEASON ON PERCIEVED ANXIETY
OF FEMALE COLLEGIATE ATHLETES
A Program Project for Leadership in Physical Activity A Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
HPERD 570; 580
Degree of Master of Science
with a
Major in Recreation
in the
College of Graduate Studies
University of Idaho
by
Kacie Linn Hogan
May 5, 2010
Instructor: Sharon Kay Stoll, Ph.D
Abstract
The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to examine the effects of a competitive season on perceived anxiety level of female collegiate swimmers. The participants involved in this study are a selected group of collegiate swimmers. They collegiate athletes range from ages 18-22, and the participants are all female. The women compete at the collegiate Division I swimming level. There are 20- 25 athletes participating in the study. The participants are all student-athletes at a rural University in northern Idaho. The instrument was handed to the participants prior to the season starting in a packet of all the meets that were in the year. Along with the packet, there was a consent form that had to be filled out prior to the athletes starting the questionnaires. The questionnaire (The Sports Anxiety Scale) created by Smith, Smoll consists of fifteen questions asking about anxiety, worry, and concentration disruption. The information that we hope to gain from the survey will be about what types of anxiety the female athletes are more prone to; like worry, concentration disruption, or somatic anxiety. Upon finishing the study the results did not show a significant change. No significant difference was found by time on somatic anxiety scale scores in Division I swimmers F(12, 132) = 1.79, p=.056, partial eta2 = .14. No significant difference was found by time on the worry scale scores in Division I swimmers F(12, 144) = 1.46, p=.144, partial eta2 = .10. No significant difference was found by time on the concentration disruption scale scores in Division I swimmers F(12, 132) = 1.52, p=.125, partial eta2 = .12[s1].
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Introduction
The Problem: Perceived Anxiety
Problem Statement
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Research Sub-Problems
Statistical Sub-Problems
Hypothesis
Assumptions
Limitations
Definitions
Needs for Study
Chapter Two
Review of Literature
Effects of Anxiety on Performance
Swimming and Collegiate Swimming
Female Collegiate Swimming
What is a Season
Anxiety
Chapter Three
Methodology
Participants
Instrument
Sports Anxiety Scale
Procedures
Design and Analysis
References
Appendix A
Appendix B
Informed Consent
Title of Research: Sports Anxiety
Appendix C
Sport Anxiety Scale-2 Smith, Smoll, Cummings, Grossbard
Reactions to Playing Sports
Appendix D
Certificate of Completion
Chapter One
Introduction
The Problem: Perceived Anxiety
Swimming is a recreational sport that is highly enjoyed by all ages and usually can be enjoyed anytime of the year. People learn how to swim from infancy to adulthood. When learning to swim, the students are generally taught the basics, which are front floats and back floats. They then progress to the glides where they add kick, then moving onto the learning of strokes. There are four strokes that are taught throughout a lessons program; the strokes are Butterfly, Backstroke, Breaststroke, and Freestyle. There four phases to swimming you have the reach, catch, pull, and their recovery it is important to understand what phase is, so that when swimming at a competitive level you can swim these events individually of combined without a disruption.
Competitive swimming in the collegiate atmosphere is an extremely high-intensity sport. When athletes are in a competitive setting for swimming, they are trying to reach a peak performance level for a specific competition at the end of the season. Women’s swim team in this stage are a hard working group that produce a range of 15,000 yards -25,000 yards a day; the ladies abide a strict training schedule to insure optimal performance level for the conference meet. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they swim in the morning doing and hour and a half of weights, while in the afternoon they spend two hours of training in the pool. Tuesday and Thursday they spend two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, on Saturdays they spend a three-hour session in the pool, while resting on Sunday. Anxiety becomes a part of these athletes’ lives; they wonder about the content of their practices for the day, the week, the month. Their anxiety levels increase due to the competition; if they are being stressed about performance on an upcoming meet the anxiety increasingly builds. In the swimming world, anxiety is a constraint for the athlete; when the athletes are pressured they must harvest the anxiety that has built up and put into a positive manner and perform. Anxiety becomes overwhelming for the athlete to control; it may cause the athlete’s performance to be hindered due to the level of anxiety or even type of anxiety. In some research conducted Thiese & Huddleston (1999) they found that athletes sampled used goal setting, positive self-talk, and music for psych-up “almost always” to prepare for competition. These are a few of the things athletes may use to help relax them and bring down their anxiety level prior to competition.
Athletes, competition, and stress all have a common relationship; and that is athletes compete which can produce stress on the athletes. Stress can help an athlete with their competition or it can take a toll on the athletes’ performance and create a negative effect. This study is a closer examination at the correlation of stress and competition on the female collegiate swimmer athletes.
Problem Statement
The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to examine the effects of a competitive season on perceived anxiety level of female collegiate swimmers.
Independent Variable
The independent variable in this study is the competitive season the female collegiate athletes endure.
Dependent Variable
The dependent variables in this study is the anxiety levels throughout the competitive season.
Research Sub-Problems
- What are the effects of anxiety on performance level?
- What is swimming?
- What is women’s swimming?
- What are collegiate swimmers?
- What are collegiate women swimmers?
- What is a female collegiate athlete?
- What is a competitive season?
- Length?
- Months?
- Hours?
- What is anxiety?
- What is anxiety in competition?
- What is anxiety in collegiate competition?
- What is anxiety in women collegiate competition?
- What is perceived level of anxiety?
Statistical Sub-Problems
- What difference exists by time on somatic anxiety in Division I swimming?
- What difference exists by time on the worry scale in Division I swimmers?
- What difference exists by time on the concentration disruption scale in Division I Swimmers?
Hypothesis
- No differenceexists by time on somatic anxiety in Division I swimming.
- No difference exists by time on the worry scale in Division I swimmers.
- No difference exists by time on the concentration disruption scale in Division I swimmers.
Assumptions
- Perceived anxiety will correlate to negative performance
2.Outside stressors will create negative outcomes on practice and performance potentially
3.Highly competitive activity can be a stressor
4.Competition can create positive or negative stressors
Limitations
- The population size is limited the to the Women’s U of I Swim team.
- The location of study is limited to a rural town.
- The amount of time is on a limited the time of the season.
Definitions
- Anxiety- A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning.
- Somatic anxiety- primarily a tension phenomenon, with restlessness, agitation, impatience, hyper reactivity and irritability. It is largely but not entirely observable.
Needs for Study
This study is important in swimming field because stress and anxiety is a big part in competition. Athletes have varying levels of stress throughout a season possibly causing their performance to either be enhanced or hindered. With this study, we are examining what kinds of events cause the athletes to be stressed and whether the stress is creating a positive or negative effect on their performance with our results we may in the future be able to help athletes. With this information,we hope to find a way that will help reduce the negative anxiety and increase the positive anxiety. If we are able to do that, we could apply this to a greater population to students for test taking or the general public, in helping rid the negative anxiety in daily life. The actual athletes that are being surveyed will at the end see what the results are and how they correlate to their performance.
Chapter Two
Review of Literature
The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to examine the effects of a competitive season on perceived anxiety level of female collegiate swimmers.
Effects of Anxiety on Performance
Anxiety can have a devastating effect on an athlete’s performance. No matter how much talent and skill the athlete has, they will never perform at their best if you live in fear and anxiety before every event. Different strategies exist for athletes to cope with anxiety during performance. Acute stress is defined in different ways throughout Anshel, Williams,Williams, & Sheila (2000) Sudden, or acute stress (e.g., making a mental or physical error, experiencing pain, observing an opponent cheat or perform successfully, receiving a penalty from a game official, being reprimanded by the coach) is common incompetitivesport. As described by Carpenter (1992), stresscan consist of various reactions of the person (i.e., the stressful response) to demands perceived as noxious, heavy, and exceeding readily available resources (i.e., the stressful situation). Similarly, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) viewed stressas a function of highly demanding situations coupled with the person's limited emotional resources for effectively coping with these demands. The idea of anxiety and stress may not be apparent right away, some sports may not even have anxiety or stress entered into their performance (Kerr, Wilson, Svebak and Kirkcaldy, 2006; Wilson, Raglin, Pritchard, 2002; Stoeber, Otto, Pescheck, Becker, & Stoll, 2007). However a collegiate swimmer probably does. Anxiety can also come from an athlete dealing with an injury. "Injury" by McFarland & Wasik (1996) was defined as any contact with a trainer or physician that resulted in evaluation or treatment. If the athlete is trying to get back into training but cannot due to injury or has to slowly work their way back in it can cause the athlete to become extremely anxious and in some cases frustrated,
Swimming and Collegiate Swimming
Swimming is an activity that can be enjoyed by everyone, whether you are a skilled swimmer and capable of swimming miles and miles or, if all you can do is dangle your feet. According to Berger & Owen (1983) swimming is a sport that is more complex than running. It takes considerable more motor coordination. When starting the basics of swimming it may take quite a bit of time to understand how the body moves in the water. This could potentially cause a frustration to the learner. The women swimmers are generally according to McKenzie and Rushall (1974) self directed and self-motivated to perform (Koivula, Haamen, & Fallby, 2002; Russell, 2001). In swimming it takes a lot of work and understanding according to Krane, Stiles-Shipley, Waldron, & Michalenok, (2000); it is reasonable to suggest that they have developed coping skills to focus their attention on their performance. In conclusion the collegiate level swimming is a skilled athlete who has an understanding of the strokes that partake in the swimming world. Collegiate athletes are capable of continuous swims for hours, and have often times a rigorous training schedule.
Female Collegiate Swimming
Title IX has given women more possibilities in the athletic setting. The authors of, In The Battle of Gender,(2002)state, “Title IX requires that members of both sexes have equal opportunities to participate in sports and receive the benefits of competitive athletics. It also requires that athletic scholarships be allocated equitably and that men and women be treated fairly in all aspects of sports programming” (p. 2). With this being said more women each year join athletics in the University setting, although there are still not an equal balance of women to men When Title IX was passed in 1972, “fewer than 32,000 women competed in intercollegiate athletics. Women received only 2% of schools’ athletic budgets, and athletic scholarships for women were nonexistent” (The Battle of Gender, p. 2). Currently the numbers have jumped tremendously. This has given women many more opportunities to come to school, get a degree, as well as compete in what they love to do. With Title IX, the universities are required to equally disperse scholarships to males and females. As of now there are still less women than men who are collegiate athletes, The Battle of Gender, (2002) put the statistic of, “…170,384 men played college sports in 1971-72, [while] only 150,916 women played college sports in 2000-01” (p. 2).Today in the competitive world of sports women according to Cahn (1994) are Forced to deal with a constant barrage of criticism fromdiehard defenders of a male sporting tradition, generations of twentieth-century female athletes and their advocates successfully carved a niche for women in a sporting culture whose deep identification with masculinity nevertheless remained unyielding. With “real” sport and “real” athletes defined as masculine, women of this century have occupied only a marginal space in the sports world and an even more tenuous position in athletic governance. Competitive swimming today is one of the female collegiate sports that are seen quite frequently at universities.
What is a Season
A season can consist of different elements depending on what type of athlete you are. Football, Basketball, Volleyball, Track & Field, Soccer, and Swimming all have different varying levels of training. When younger many of these sports are only played during their season. Swimming however is generally trained all year long with a small break usually at the end of the summer (August). Although there are different choices for swimmers, there are; summer leagues, winter season, and then spring season. Generally athletes, who swim, do it all year continuously. Collegiate swimming differs; they have requirements that they have to follow. NCAA also gives the coaches restrictions on how many hours of training can be performed under the coaches’ supervision. For the research team in this study, swimming varies from 4 hours a day to 3 hours a day, by the end of the week that equates to 20 hours a week.
Anxiety
The participant may not realize the level of anxiety until it is too late, (Masten, Tusak, &Faganel 2006). Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning (Ansel, Porter, & Quek, 1998). When anxiety affects the competitors’ mindset, the athlete makes a decision to have it either negatively affect performance or positively enhance performance (Legrand & LeScanff, 2003). If the athlete is positive and motivated for their race or competition, he/she will then have a higher chance of performing well (Grove & Stoll, 1998; Alexander & Krane, 1996; Krane, 1994). Legrand & LeScanff (2003) also state that low arousal somatic emotions would not seem to be likely or appropriate during most highly active sport competitions. Successful athletes usually evoke strong emotions. That also can be turned to a negative though if the athlete is overly aroused they have so much anxiety they cannot focus properly on the competition (Hall, Kerrr, &Matthews, 1998; Bahrke & Morgan, 1978). The life of a collegiate athlete is not always the least stressful, Felsten & Wilcox (1993) say that anxiety/stress from just normal daily events can cause the athlete’s performance to be hindered or have problems. The idea of anxiety can be daunting on athletes as they over think things.Anshel, Williams, Williams, & Sheila, 2000; Covassin & Pero, 2004,talked about perceived level of anxiety or being a heightened awareness on a scale of anxiety/stress level (Raglin, 1992; Baker, Côté, & Hawes, 2000; Raglin & Hanin, 1999).With the study being conducted the idea behind it is to find out what type of anxiety the athletes are conducting. Once that is decided we are then able to go back and try different methods to help relax the athlete and create a better environment for their performance.
Chapter Three
Methodology
The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to examine the effects of a competitive season on perceived anxiety level of female collegiate swimmers.
Participants
The participants involved in this study are a selected group of collegiate swimmers. They collegiate athletes range from ages 18-22, and the participants are all female. The women compete at the collegiate Division I swimming level. There are 20- 25 athletes participating in the study. The participants are all student-athletes at a rural University in northern Idaho. The athletes’ taking the anxiety instrument did not need to have any special skills except for the ability to read and understand the wording of the questionnaire. The student-athletes had to be honest of their feelings about the competition. The instrument was handed to the participants prior to the season starting in a packet of all the meets that were in the year. Along with that packet was the consent that had to be filled out prior to the athletes starting the questionnaires. When talking with the athletes about these packets, I made sure they all had a number that way there are no names involved. Along with the directions about the questionnaire, I asked the athletes to fill them out prior to racing; I asked them if a reminder before the swim meets would be helpful for them. Prior to each meet, a day in advance I will be sending out an email to the female participants about the questionnaire.
Protecting Participants
All subjects were given a written explanation of the study and the option to participate. Consent forms were given to the participants to fill out. All participant information was kept securely locked in a file cabinet within an office which remained locked when not occupied by office personnel. Trained and certified instructors taught the outdoor adventure activities. The Human Assurances Committee at the University of Idaho reviewed this project (Project Number 09-091) for significant risk to the human subjects and gave approval (see Appendix A).