Fourteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Psychological skills significantly influence athletes’ performance, achievements, and personal development. The study aims to identify and compare the psychological skills of university-level judokas. A total of 146 male and female university-level judokas Mage 20.68±1.95 years participated in the All India University Judo competition. Further, they were categorized into male and female judokas [n=110 & n=46]; medalists and no-medalist [n=45 & n=111]. Athletic Coping Skills Inventory-28 (Smith et al., 1995) measured the psychological skills of judokas. Data analyzed using descriptive statistics and MANOVA. Further, ANOVA was calculated to compare the significance of differences among psychological variables. Significance was set at 0.05 level. Descriptive statistics reveal that Indian university female judokas exhibited higher mean values on all the psychological skill variables except freedom from worry based on gender. When compared with performance, no significant difference was observed in psychological skill variables, though medalists’ judokas showed higher means on all variables than non-medalists. The MANOVA results indicated a significant effect on the dependent variables based on gender, F (7, 147) = 2.087, p< 0.05. The only variable, the level of coping with adversity, was significantly high among female judokas compared to male judokas (univariate F (1, 147) = 48.542, p< 0.001). The university-level female judokas had better psychological skills than male judokas except for freedom from worry. No significant effects were observed between psychological skill variables and performance (medalist and non-medalist). University-level female judokas found higher degrees of coping skills with adversity than male judokas.