Assessment of Extraversion Variable of Male Indian Hockey Players

During the present century sports has become a cultural phenomenon of great magnitude and complexity. It has penetrated most, if not all, of our social institutions including education, economics, arts, politics, law, mass-communication and international diplomacy. Sportsman and spectators are very clear about the value and significance of sports. That is why scientific investigations of the performance of sportsmen are playing a vital role in achieving top class performance. Winning laurels at international sports arena has become a prestige issue linked with political system and as such nations vie with others to produce top class sportsman for international competitions. For this, research is systematically conducted to identify the factors that help in achieving level of skill, which a player can attain through proper coaching and evaluation. In the modern scientific age, in every field of human endeavour, systematic objective and scientific procedures are followed in accordance with principles based on experience, understanding and application of knowledge of science. The field of games and sports is no exception to this. In advanced countries like U.S.A., Germany, Russia, Australia, Britain and others, the rapid progress in the field of games and sports like athletics, hockey, soccer etc has taken place and their international achievements have been possible only due to research, experimentation and application of scientific knowledge.

The subjects for this study were selected from various Indian Universities. Among the 256 Male Hockey Players from East, West, North and South Zone Universities of India (top four university teams from each zone), who qualified for the All India Inter Zonal Inter Varsity Hockey Men Tournament held at University of Calcutta, West Bengal, from 15th to 22nd January 2004. 128 players were selected to serve as subjects for this study in which 64 players from the semi finalist teams and 64 players from the rest of Universities Teams. The age of the subjects ranged between 17 to 25 years.

The Eysenck's Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) is a brief, but standard as well as an easily administered and scored inventory which is designed for assessing Introversion – Extraversion dimensions of personality. It is suitable for normal and abnormal adults and also for adolescents. The vocabulary required is that of the average newspaper. Although no time limit is enforced in the testing but the short scale takes about 3 to 5 minutes, while the long scale takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Items from serial number 1 to 12 given on the front page of the test booklet make the short scale, while all the 48 items of the booklet constitute the long scale. Each of these

All the subjects were assembled in a classroom. A model answer sheet with examples of Eysenck's Maudsley Personality Inventory was displayed in an enlarged form on a chart paper. The subjects were explained about the purpose of the test. After making sure that the subjects have clearly understood the procedure to fill up the answer sheets, they were asked to record the answers. All the 48 items of Eysenck‘s Maudsley Personality Inventory were to be answered by the subjects. The test was scored directly from the test booklet. It was made clear to the subjects that their answers must be marked inside the boxes provided for the alternatives of the given items. If it was marked outside or above the boxes, proper corrections were made before scoring. The test booklets were scanned to ascertain that only one answer was marked for each question. The scoring stencil was then placed along the anchoring points made on the test booklet. The raw scores were read off and added to give a total of extraversion scores respectively.

To determine the significance difference between the means of the performance of the players of semi finalist and 64 randomly selected players of rest of the teams on extroversion in All India Inter-Zonal Inter Varsity Hockey Men Tournament, t-ratio was computed. Data pertaining to this has been presented in Table – 1 and illustrated in Figure-1.

The mean performances in Extraversion for semi finalist and other 64 randomly selected players from rest of the teams were 27.125 and 29.125 respectively. Thus the mean performance showed a difference of 2.000. Hence, there is no significant difference in Extraversion as the obtained t value of 1.86 is lower than the required value to be significant at t 0.05 (126) = 1.98.

No significant difference was found between the semi-finalist and rest of the Universities Players on extraversion variables.

The subject of this study were from the four best teams qualified from the south, north, east and west zone implying that their physical and mental abilities are almost at par but still from these teams some teams were able to secure positions as always happens in the tournaments.

Charles A. Bucher (1975). Foundation of Physical Education and Sports 7th Edition (London: C. V. Mosby Company, 1975). John W. Loy, Bary O. McPherson and Gerald Kenyon (1978). Sports and Social System (London: Addison Wesley Publishing Company Inc. M L. Kamlesh and M. S. Sangral (1981). Principles and History of Physical Education (Ludhiana: Prakash Brothers, 1981). Vidyacharan Shukla (1982). "Message" Abstract: International Congress of Sports Sciences, (Patiala: November, 1982).

Sports Officer, Indore