A Comparison of Competitive State Anxiety between Male and Female Volleyball Players

The purpose of study was to investigate the feeling of anxiety by male and female volleyball players before and during the competition. The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory – 2 (CSAI-2) by Martens, et al, (1990) was used to assess and compare the anxiety level of male and female volleyball players before and during competition. Forty-two (20 female and 22 male) volleyball players, between the age of 19 and 30 years, who were participating in Chhattisgarh State Volleyball Championships at Rajnandgaon, were taken as subjects for this study. Descriptive statistics and Two way factorial ANOVA (2X2: gender x stage of competition) were computed to compare gender, and anxiety level before and during competition. The results indicated that there was no statistical significant difference, at .05 level between gender and anxiety level did not change throughout the competition. * Grade-I Gymnastic Coach, State Coaching Center, Sports and Youth Welfare Department, Office of the Police Superintendent, Bilaspur ( C. G. ) ** department. of Physical Education. R. D. University, Jabalpur ( M. P. ), India. INDIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, SPORTS AND APPLIED SCIENCES Vol.5, N0.1, January, 2015 ISSN 2229-550X Sports Scientists Views in IJPESAS 2 INTRODUCTION Anxiety is a natural reaction to threats in the environment and part of the fight or flight response. Sporting competitions promotes similar psychological and bodily responses because there is often a threat posed towards the ego; one‟s selfesteem. Essentially, when the demand of training and competition exceeds one‟s perceived ability, anxiety is inevitable outcome (Levitt, 1967). The anxiety that are closely related to fear. These are threat to self-esteem as a result of failure; threat to personal harm; unpredictability or fear of the unknown; fear of disruption of daily habits; and; fear of being negatively evaluated by others (Cox, 1994). It is thought that as the importance of the situation increases, cognitive anxiety will be influenced (Sewell & Edmondson, 1996; Alexander & Krane, 1996) whilst somatic anxiety will decrease with the onset of competition (Alexander & Krane, 1996). It is also expected that before competition, anxiety in females will be higher in both the cognitive and somatic components and lower in self-confidence than their male counterparts, as indicated by several previous studies (Martens et al., 1990; Krane & Williams, 1994; Madden & Kirby, 1995; Sewell & Edmondson, 1996). Amu (2005) described that there was no gender difference in pre-competitive somatic anxiety among university Badminton Players, however, gender difference was found with male players experienced higher than female players in pre-competitive cognitive anxiety. Humara (1999) indicates that although anxiety has a considerable impact on performance, it is important to consider other components of an athlete's functioning as well. Bekiari et.al. (2006) described that male volleyball players rated somatic anxiety higher and were more affected by the verbal aggressiveness of their coaches than female volleyball players. Russell, Robb, & Cox(1998) revealed a significant interaction of sport by sex and a significant main effect for sport. The basketball players scored higher somatic and cognitive state anxiety than volleyball players. Any or all of these factors may have serious consequences. The purpose of study was to investigate the feeling of anxiety by male and female volleyball players before and during the competition. as measured by the CSAI-2 (Martens, et al., 1990), It was also hypothesized that there would be no significant difference between genders in their competitive anxiety METHODOLOGY