Coach-athlete Relationship, Sports Perfectionism and Sports Anxiety among Adolescent Swimmers: A Correlational Study

Description

Page: 76-80

Devika Aniruddha Munagekar and Pradnya Kulkarni (Department of Psychology, Sir Parashurambhau College (Empowered Autonomous), Pune, Maharashtra)

The present study was to explore the relationship between coach-appropriate relationships, Sports Perfectionism, and Sports Anxiety among adolescent swimmers. The study employed correlational research design and purposive sampling with a sample size of 50 adolescent swimmers from different swimming clubs. The study used the Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire by Jowett to measure coach-athlete relationships, Sports Perfectionism Scale by (Gotwals & Dunn, 2009) perfectionism, and Sports Anxiety Scale by Smith et al. (2006) to measure sports anxiety respectively. The study hypothesized various relationships between these 3 variables. Descriptive statistics and Spearmen’s Correlation tests were conducted to obtain correlation coefficients. The findings indicated that there is a weak positive and non-significant correlation between coach-athlete relationships and Sports Perfectionism. There is a moderate and significant positive correlation between Sports Perfectionism and Sports anxiety. General findings of the overall results show moderate positive correlations existed between subscales of sports perfectionism and sports anxiety, except for organization whereby a weak negative correlation was found. However, coach-athlete relationships and Sports Anxiety were weakly negatively correlated with non-significance. Thus, research found that higher levels of maladaptive perfectionism could be associated with increased anxiety in adolescent swimmers. Although the coach-athlete relationship did not show a direct impact on perfectionism or anxiety in this study, the role of coaches in creating supportive, communicative, and trustful environments remains critical. Study can be applied in various fields and using a larger sample authenticity and significance of the research can be improved.