Comparison of Mood States in Elite Women Wheelchair Basketball Players Prior to Paralympic Team Selection

Abstract

The Profile of Mood States (POMS) has been widely used to compare athletes vs. nonathletes and to predict success of elite athletes. Little is known, however, regarding mood state profiles of elite women wheelchair basketball players. PURPOSE: To examine mood states of elite women wheelchair basketball players during the 2004 Paralympic Team selection camp and to compare mood state profiles between players that were selected for the team and those that were not. METHODS: Twenty-six candidates for the 2004 USA Women's Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball team participated in a training camp in 2003. At the beginning of the camp, the athletes were asked to complete the POMS, which was administered and scored by a licensed psychologist. Raw scores were computed for the seven POMS factors including Tension (TEN), Depression (DEP), Anger (ANG), Vigor (VIG), Fatigue (FAT), Confusion (CON), and Total Mood Disturbance (TMD). After the team was announced at the end of camp, individual data were placed into one of two groups, those selected for the team (TM, n = 13) and those that were not (NS, n = 13). Mean group scores for each factor were calculated and independent samples t-tests (SPSS 14.0) were conducted. RESULTS: Significant differences (p < .05) were found between the groups on Depression, Vigor, Confusion, and TMD. As shown in Table 1, the NS group reported less vigor and higher levels of depression, confusion and total mood disturbance.Table 1: Mean (SD) raw scores for each group on the POMS factors.CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate differences in mood states between two subsets of elite women wheelchair basketball players based on Paralympic team selection. Neither group, however, demonstrated the typical Iceberg Profile.