Relationship between Playing Ability and Psychological Variables among Beginner Basketball Players

Psychological variables are essential for knowing the status of an individual and its relationship with other variables are also necessary to find out that if he/she has the ability to perform optimally in any game and sports. By knowing the extent of relationship one can easily judge whether one has the talent to play the related game or not. Talent identification and its development has become an important area of research in sports. In performance sports, due to rapidly increasing participation and performance density, only person who have talent have a chance of winning a medal in an international competition. Experience has also shown that talent alone is no guarantee for winning a medal. Talent has to be coupled with hard and rigorous training spread over several years. But it is talent which ultimately determines the maximum limit to which sports performance can be improved through training. I as a researcher want to know the relationship between playing ability and psychological variables among beginner basketball players.

• The first objective of the study was to characterize the psychological variables of beginner basketball players. • The second objective of the study was to find out the relationship between playing ability and psychological variables of beginner basketball players.

Psychological variables were measured with the following tests: Anxiety - Sport competition anxiety test (SCAT) questionnaire prepared by Rainer Martens.

The study contains psychological variables and playing ability in basketball. The psychological variables were measured with the help of above mentioned questionnaire and the playing ability was subjectively rated from the beginner players of Basketball by the three experts with ten points scale on the selected game of basketball. With the advice of Guide and discussion with basketball experts the researcher made a ten point scale through which the Basketball playing ability was measured. The average of the three experts rating was taken as a score. The experts were Mr. Ankush Rautela, Mr. Bhuwan Joshi and Mr. Chanky Pandey.

The present study consists of psychological variables and playing ability. To determine the relationship between psychological variables and playing ability Pearson product moment correlation was used. The computation of multiple regressions was also used. In multiple regressions, a criterion variable was predicted from a set of predictors. Forward selection method of multiple regressions was used in this study to find out the predictor variable that has the highest correlation with the criterion variables and it is entered into the equation first. The rest variables are entered into the equation depending on the contribution of each predictor which is required to identify the talent in Basketball players. In all the cases 0.05 level of significance was fixed to test the hypothesis.

Above table depicts the descriptive analysis of selected Psychological variables (Independent Variables). Mean values of Psychological Anxiety and Self Concept are 16.88 and 169.41 respectively. Standard deviation values of Psychological variables Anxiety and Self Concept are 5.08 and 25.29 respectively. The graphical representation of above table has been given below in the figure no.1 and the relationships between the two variables were represented in table 2.

Table no 2 shows the relationship between Psychological variables and playing ability. Significant relationship was found between Anxiety (0.85) and Self Concept (0.81) with basketball playing ability at 0.05 level of significance. Multiple correlation was presented in table 3 and the regression equation was also developed.

Multiple Regression equation in order to predict the Psychological ability in basketball playing is.

Where Y = Basketball Playing Ability. psychological variables influenced the Basketball playing ability and these psychological variables was the key factor to identify the talent in Basketball. Similar study namely ―Impact of Psychological variables on playing ability of University level Soccer players‖ was done by Dr. Ertan Tufekcioglu (2014) and revealed that significant relationship was found between self concept and playing ability and anxiety and playing ability. These psychological variables plays vital role for performance. Mental makeup can only be prepared if one has low anxiety and high self concept. The study conducted by Dr. Ertan Tufekcioglu (2014) supports the present study.

The findings of the study show that the high correlation was found between playing ability and psychological variables (anxiety and self-concept).

Dr. Erta on Tufekcioglu & et. al. (2014). Impact of Psychological variables on playing ability of university level of soccer players.” Sportif Bakis, pp. 30-35. H. Halvari, and Gjesme T.: "Trait and State Anxiety before and after Competitive Performance", Perceptual Motor Skills, Dec; 81(3 Pt 2), pp. 1059-74. Selvakumar, N. (2002). Prediction of soccer playing ability from selected physical fitness, physiological, psychological and game skill variables. Unpublished Master thesis. University of Madras. Chennai. Tsolakis, C., Kortaki, E. & Vagenas, G. (2010). Anthropometric, Flexibility, Strength,Power and Sports specific go related in elite fancing. Perceptual Motor Skills, 110 (3pt 2) pp. 1015-28.

Research Scholar, School of Physical Education D.A.V.V., Indore