Anxiety among Track and Field Athlete

Abstract

Sports performance, like any other type of human performance, is a highly complex process and a product of several internal and external factors encompassing all the aspects of human personality and to achieve excellence in it, it is becoming more and more significant to identify and utilize the psychological factors that are particularly important in sports settings, specially those related to athletic performance. Anxiety is one psychological factor, which plays crucial role in the final outcome of all the sports encounters. It is being explored incessantly in different sports settings, regarding different sports groups and at different levels. Through the present study, an attempt has been made to investigate the same among the national level track and field athletes. Subject (N-286) was athletes who had participated at 63^rd Inter University athletic championship which was held at Gulbarga University, Gulbarga from 16^th to 21^st January, 2003. The sample consisted of 150 male and 136 female athletes. Similarly, there were 144 athletes form successful group and 142 form unsuccessful category. In all 122 were form Northern region and 164 from Southern region. The age group of 18 to 25 years studying at the college and university levels. To collect the data “Sinha’s Comprehensive Anxiety Test (1995)” was administered to measure state and trait anxiety and “Marten’s Inventory (1977)” was administered to measure the sports competition anxiety. Results regarding the state and trait anxiety indicated that the female group of athletes was more anxious as compare to male counterpart. The interaction effect between region and gender as well as between performance and gender were found significant. The athletes form Northern region, unsuccessful as well as female groups were higher level of sports competition anxiety as compared to athletes from southern region, successful and male groups respectively. Interaction between region and performance only was found significant. Any other results were not found significant.