A comparative analysis of mental toughness and competitive anxiety between team and individual sports players

Abstract

Certain moments during a competition appear to carry great psychological significance when the momentum starts to shift in one direction or another. These situations require athletes to remain completely focused and calm in difficult circumstances. In concept, mental toughness and anxiety play the most important roles in competition, and these are the most important parts of competition. The study aimed to compare the anxiety and mental toughness between team game players & individual game players. A total of 80 players who have played at the inter-University level of H.N.B.G.U, Srinagar, Garhwal, are categorized as Team Game and Individual Game (40 in each continuum). The data was collected on psychological attributes, namely Sports Mental Toughness, and Sports Competitive Anxiety Test. The data about psychological difference was collected by administering the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire for measuring mental toughness prepared by Michael Sheard, Jim Golby, and Anna Van Wersch (2009) and the Sports Competitive Anxiety test for measuring anxiety prepared by Martens et al. (1990) Psychological attributes were analyzed statistically by using Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and an independent ‘t’ test. The result indicated that the individual games players mean squares and standard deviation of mental toughness and sports anxiety are (42.50 ± 6.45) and (19.90 ± 3.67), respectively and team games players mean squares and the standard deviation of mental toughness and sports anxiety are (42.13 ± 5.03) and (19.00 ± 3.97), respectively. The individual game players were found to have a comparatively lower mean score as compared to the team game players. It was concluded that there was an insignificant difference between the mean scores of individual and team game players on sports mental toughness and sports competition anxiety. However, the sports mental toughness and sports competition anxiety of individual game players were a little higher than those of team sports players.