Competition anxiety between participants of individual, dual, and team sports: A comparative study of foreign sports students in Beijing Sport University

Abstract

This study is designed to assess the level of competition anxiety between participants of individual, dual, and team sports. It also separately examines the somatic anxiety, worry, and concentration disruption for the respondents in each sports group. The Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2) and one-way ANOVA were used to obtain the desired results. Data was collected using questionnaires from 60 international sports students at Beijing Sport University. Results of the study indicate that the mean anxiety of athletes engaging in individual sports was the highest, this was followed by participants involved in team sports and dual sports. The Tukey post hoc test for testing the significant differences between the pair of means further revealed that the means of individual sports is highest and significantly different (p<0.05) from both the means of dual and team sports. Moreover, the total somatic anxiety was 0.47 (47%) and higher than the other two anxiety factors (worry, and concentration disruption) in the individual sports group. The dual sports group also showed similar results, however, in the team sports group, the highest problem faced by athletes was concentration disruption and worry. The deduction from these results suggests that sports anxiety tends to make athletes perform poorly during competitions since it affects their confidence and self-esteem. It is therefore salient for sports management stakeholders to develop appropriate mechanisms that will help athletes cope with situations that trigger anxiety during competitions.