Leveling the playing field: can psychological coping resources reduce the influence of physical and technical skills on athletic performance?^*

* This article is based in part on a University of Washington doctoral dissertation conducted by the first author under the direction of the second author.

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: The present study assessed the extent to which individual differences in psychological coping resources are related to athletic performance; whether they can attenuate the amount of performance variance accounted for by physical/technical skills; and whether coping resources remain significant predictors of performance when physical/technical skill level is statistically controlled.

Methods: Twenty college golf coaches rated the physical/technical skills of 189 men and women varsity golfers on their teams. Athletes completed the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28), with the total (Personal Coping Resources) score serving as a global measure of sport-relevant psychological coping resources. Subsequent performance (stroke average per round) of 105 golfers was assessed over a mean of 12.04 competitive rounds during the remainder of the season.

Results: Physical/technical skills and psychological coping resource measures were minimally correlated and both were significant and similarly influential predictors of performance. With psychological resources controlled, performance variance accounted for by physical/technical skills was reduced from 21.2% to 10.6%. With physical/technical skills statistically controlled, psychological coping resources, though reduced from 18.2% to 7.5% of accountable variance, remained a significant predictor of performance.

Conclusion: Results support the significant role played by psychological coping resources as predictors of athletic performance, together with their ability to “level the field” by reducing the influence of physical/technical talent.

KEYWORDS:

• Athletic performance
• psychological skills
• athletic coping resources
• athletic coping skills inventory

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our thanks to Patrick Gaudreau and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and recommendations.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

* This article is based in part on a University of Washington doctoral dissertation conducted by the first author under the direction of the second author.

1 To assess the possibility that the interaction effect would become evident only at the extremes of the distributions, a follow-up 2 × 2 analysis of covariance (controlling for gender and M-CSDS score) was performed utilizing groups of athletes whose scores fell in the upper and lower thirds of the two distributions. The main effects for both physical/technical skills, F (1,54) = 5.47, p = .023, η² = .09, and coping resources, F (1,54) = 8.40, p = 005, η² = .14, were significant, but, again, the interaction between physical/technical skills and coping resources was not, F (1,54) = 2.65, p = .11, η² = .05). It is worth noting, however, that in partial support of the hypothesis, a planned contrast between the group in the top thirds on both attributes and that in the lowest thirds yielded a significant difference in stroke average, with the high-high group (M = 74.35, SD = 2.67) performing at a superior level compared to the low-low group (M = 78.82, SD = 3.20), t (34) = 4.14, p = .0002.

2 To compare analytic strategies, we repeated the hierarchical regression analyses with the seven ACSI subscale scores entered as a block in place of the Personal Coping Resources total score. The results were quite similar to those reported in Table 2. When entered first in the new Analysis 1, the ACSI subscale scores accounted for 21.8% of the performance variance, slightly more than when the total score was used. Variance accounted for was reduced to 9% but remained significant when physical/technical skills were entered first in Analysis 2, ps < .001. When entered first in Analysis 2, physical/technical skills accounted for 20.7% of the variance and reduced that accounted for by the ACSI subscales from 21.8% to 10.2%, ps < .001.