Comparison of stress vulnerability among the selected team sports

Abstract

The objective of the study is to assess the level of stress and to compare the stress vulnerability among the athletes of different team sports i.e., basketball, volleyball, football and hockey. And, also assess, whether the stress vulnerability in a population have equal variances.Method: For the purpose of the study the total of 112 (28 male from each team sports) were selected. The subjects were Inter-University athletes at National level from different team sports i.e. basketball, volleyball, football and hockey. And the age of the subjects were ranged from 17 to 28. For the assessment of the data on the stress vulnerability of selected athletes the questionnaire “Stress Vulnerability Scale” developed by Lyle H. Miller and Alma Dell Smith (1989), Boston University Medical Centre and also cited by Werner W.K. Hoeger, “Lifetime Physical Fitness and Wellness”. To find out the Stress Level of selected athletes, descriptive statistics was used, and to examine the significance differences of stress vulnerability between selected sports athletes, one way ANOVA was used and the hypothesis was tested at.05 level of significance.Results: the mean and standard deviation of Stress Vulnerability for selected subjects of team sports i.e., basketball (28.607 ± 8.862), volleyball (27.571 ± 7.480), football (25.607 ± 5.685), hockey (25.321 ± 8.563) respectively. The ANOVA results shows that the p-value for stress vulnerability of selected subjects is greater than 0.05 and hence the F- value is insignificant at 5 % level. This show that the selected team sport having similar tolerance of stress caused by training or any other factors related to the training.Conclusion: There is no difference in the stress vulnerability between the selected sports i.e., basketball, volleyball, football and hockey. And however, less level of stress was found in hockey players as comparison to mean score with the others team sports players. The author further suggest that there should be other factors which might bring insignificant difference between the selected team sports and further study can also be done with other sports or increasing subjects or by increasing other psychological variables to make more understanding the real causes of similarities among the selected sports.