The Coping Strategies Used by Young Tunisian Athletes in Individual and Collective Sports

Jamel Hajji,Maher Guerchi,Fairouz Azaiez,Ali Elloumi,Nicola Bragazzi,Anouer Bettayeb,Sofien Fekih

doi:10.3390/psychiatryint2030021

Jamel Hajji, Maher Guerchi + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/psychiatryint2030021

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Journal: Psychiatry International	Publication Date: Jul 1, 2021
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Gafsa, University of Sfax

Abstract

The objective of this study was to discover the repertoire of coping strategies used by young Tunisian male and female athletes in individual and team sports when competing in their sport, and to examine the effect of gender and type of sport on these strategies. A total of 917 young Tunisian athletes including 349 female athletes and 568 male athletes, aged 14 to 19, with an average age of 15.63 ± 1.5 years, participated in our study. Participants were invited to respond to the Arabic version of the Competitive Sport Adaptation Strategy Inventory to assess their coping repertoire. The results revealed that factors, such as gender, and type of sport, influenced the coping repertoire among young athletes. In the inter-personal and intra-personal context, young athletes used a wide variety of coping strategies, all of which were task-oriented and disengagement-oriented.

Highlights

Stress and coping represent a dynamic and reciprocal bipolarity that can be modeled and understood based on the cognitive–motivational–relational (CMRT) theory of emotion [1,2]
Analysis of variance confirmed the effect of gender (Wilks’ Lambda = 0.780 < 1; D = 25.507; p < 0.05) and type of sport (Wilks’ Lambda = 0.817 < 1; D = 20.24; p < 0.05), on the coping strategies used by young Tunisian athletes (See Table 1)
Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) confirmed the effect of gender and type of sport factors on the dispositional coping repertoire used by young Tunisian athletes in individual and team sports

Summary

Introduction

Stress and coping represent a dynamic and reciprocal bipolarity that can be modeled and understood based on the cognitive–motivational–relational (CMRT) theory of emotion [1,2]. This conceptual framework is commonly employed to improve and enhance athletic performance and has been supported by a growing body of scholarly research in the field of sports psychology [3,4]. Competitive stress can be defined as an ongoing transaction between an athlete and the environmental demands associated primarily and directly with competitive performance. As previously mentioned, coping is a dynamic mechanism that changes according to the competitive situation and represents a good indicator of performance [3,4]

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