Sources and cognitive appraisals of acute stress as predictors of coping style among male and female Chinese athletes

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to determine the extent to which sources of stressful events and cognitive appraisal of those events predict coping style and to determine differences in coping style between 138 (ns = 74 females and 64 males) Chinese college athletes at the elite level and 253 (ns = 60 females and 193 males) non‐elite athletes who had competed on their high school sports team, and currently engage in recreational (intramural) sports as college students. Two fivepoint Likert‐type inventories were developed for this study, the Sources of Acute Stress in Sport Inventory (SASSI) and the Coping Style in Sport Inventory (CSSI). The Stress Appraisal Measure (SAM; Peacock & Wong, 1990), a validated measure used extensively in the non‐sport literature, identified the athletes’ cognitive appraisals. Results of a discriminant analysis indicated that three stress sources, verbal‐abuse‐by‐others, coach‐dissatisfaction, and environmental‐sources, and two cognitive appraisals, control‐by‐self and control‐by‐others, were significant predictors for athletes’ coping styles. It was concluded that coping style is a function of the type of stressor and cognitive appraisal and that an athlete's coping style differs as a function of skill level and gender