Analysis of psychological variables predicting stress and sports-academic engagement in judokas.

Abstract

The objective of this research was to know the relationship of the predictive variables of stress and commitment in the sports and academic context of adolescent judokas based on different personal characteristics, such as sex and sports level. Material and methods: A selective research methodology was used, with a retrospective ex-post-facto design. The sample consisted of 111 competing judokas (59 men and 52 women) aged between 11 and 19 years, all of them students of regulated secondary education. Results: In general, the sample effect size was large in variables like Sport Task Coping; medium in Sport Distancing Coping and short in Sport Emo- tion Coping. The correlational analysis between the variables of interest showed the existence of a negative relationship of stress with resilience and commitment, both in the academic and sports fields. Second, two clusters were extracted from the sample using the Ward’s method and taking into account the interval provided by the squared Euclidean distance standardized by Z scores and generating a dendrogram. The analyses carried out show the existence of two large groups of judokas with similar characteristics to each other and different from the rest. The results verified the relationship between stress variables and the commitment between the academic and sports context, therefore, the sports practice could be used as a means to improve stress coping strategies and to improve commitment in the academic field. Conclusions: Sports stress predicts academic stress, and sports stress and resilience predict academic engagement.