Assessment of Personality of Indian Male Hockey Players

Personality traits of the sportsmen have strong bearing on their performance. Sports performance of individual is believe to be influenced by physical fitness on one hand and the psychological adjustment on the other. It is strikingly so, as far as the successful sportsmen are concerned because for the high level achievements in competitive sports, they need to be physically and mentally well balanced. Sports participation leads to change in certain important traits. Psychologists are of the opinion that the differences in the personality traits may encourage the athletes to participate in sports, as it is suggested that only certain personality traits can undergo the social and physical stress of participation in highly competitive sports situations. Usually sports persons seem to be extroverts, dominating, sociable, self esteemed, tough, confident and intelligent. Personality profiles are developed through continued participation of the individuals in sports competitions. Neuroticism refers to general emotional instability and individual predisposition to neurotic breakdown under stress. Personality is the term commonly used by people concerned with almost every aspect of human interaction. A coach evaluating an athlete will often refer to his/her personality. Sports commentators often used personality conflicts to account for a team's poor performance. Parents sometime compare their children on the basis of personality traits. Numerous other examples of the importance of personality in our society could be cited.

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 Neuroticism – Stability 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 item is answerable by making a tick () mark into one of the three boxes, marked with yes , ? , No . All the subjects were assembled in a classroom. A model answer sheet with examples of Eysenck's Maudsley Personality Inventory was displayed in an

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 neuroticism 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 neurotism 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 teams were 25.531 and 26.891 respectively. Thus the mean performance showed a difference of 1.360. Hence, there is no significant difference in Neurotism as the obtained t value of 0.82 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 neurotism 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.

Alderman, Psychological Behaviour in Sports. Lance, Flanagan (1952). ―A Study of Some Personality Traits of Different Physical Activities Groups‖ Research Quarterly 22 (March 1952). Phillips, Allen D. and Hornak, James E. (1979). Measurement and Evaluation in Physical Education New York: John Willey and Sons Inc.

Sports Officer, Indore