Intensity and direction of anxiety and self-confidence among elite South African crawl stroke swimmers and its relationship to performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the intensity and direction (i.e., perceived effect) of anxiety and self-confidence among elite South African crawl stroke swimmers as well as its relationship to the performance of this population. Fifteen men (19.0:t 3.36 years) and 12 women (17.7:t 2.45 years) finalists of at least one crawl stroke item during the South African Swimming Championships completed the Competitive State Anxiety Questionnaire Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) of Martens et al (1990) with an added Facilitative/Debilitative scale (Jones and Swain, 1992). Low to moderate relationships existed between the three psychological constructs levels and swimming performances. Significant (p<0.05) correlations were observed among the women swimmers for the perceived effect of somatic state anxiety and cognitive state anxiety with performance respectively. Standard multiple regression analyses showed that the performances of women swimmers were more related to their perception of cognitive state anxiety towards performance (-39.85%), while that of men swimmers were more related to their perception of state self-confidence (-9.19%). It should, however, be noted that variables other than the psychological variables included in this study, were also highly related to swimming performances, especially in the case of the men.