The effect of psychological intervention programme on sports related athletic coping skills of wheelchair cricketers

Abstract

Self-talk and imagery have been extensively studied within the context of able-bodied athletes. However, there exists a limited amount of research on para-athletes, especially in India. Hence, the purpose of this study was to understand whether there would be an impact of self-talk and imagery on a para-athlete’s coping skills. For the present study, a pre-test and post-test research design was used. The study sample included 8 male national-level wheelchair cricketers from the Maharashtra region. A psychological intervention program was developed to understand the effect of self-talk and imagery on the coping skills of wheelchair cricketers. The Demographic Sheet and the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28) developed by Smith, et al. (1995) was used to measure coping skills of para-athletes. The results revealed that even though the means and medians of the athletic coping skills increased after the administration of the psychological intervention programme, this change was statistically insignificant. This study will help to provide new insights about the coping skills of para-athletes in the Indian context. Hence, an effective intervention programme can be developed to deal with the sports related concerns of the Indian para-athletes.