A Comparative Study of Self-Confidence of Sportsmen Belonging to Individual Sports and Team Sports: Exploring the Relationship between Self-Confidence and Performance in Individual and Team Sports

Abstract

If asked you to picture in your mind a confident athlete, how would you describe this person? Descriptions that are typically used include: head up, bounce to her step, shoulders back, speaks of being to perform well, manager her nervousness, seems unfazed by competitors, etc. While these descriptions may be accurate, a characteristic of a confident athlete that you can’t see is BELIEF an inner belief or conviction in one’s ability to perform well regardless of the external environment.Sports performance is somewhat dependent on the relative contribution of many social factors, eg., group cohesion, personal identity, certain attitudes and values, reactions to others and the effect of the presence of crowd are some of the social factors which operate in sports situations. These social factors, which are related to achievement in sports performance, are difficult to measure and therefore hard to identify in specific situations. Research on elite athletes across sports suggests that a high level of self-confidence, as well as the ability to maintain that high level over time, is a factor they have in common. The challenge is in figuring out how this skill and characteristic can be developed in athletes.As an athlete and possible future coach, I think it is necessary to find out the relationship between self-confidence of sportsmen belonging to individual sports and team sports. Many studies were conducted to know the relationship of self-confidence and sports performance, but very few studies were conducted to know the relationship of individual sports and team sports performance.The subjects for the present study were sportsmen who participated in respective institution different games and sports competitions at the collegiate level during the year 2015-16. The subjects had represented their college in the Mysore city and Mysore University inter-collegiate competitions in both individual sport and team sports.Sample for the present study consisted of seventy sports men (N=70), the subjects were in the age group of 18-25 years. Out of seventy subjects serving as sample for the present study 35 sportsmen (N=35) belonged to individual sports and 35 sportsmen (N=35) belonged to team sports. The self-confidence inventory developed and standardized by Basavanna was used to measure self-confidence. To test the research hypothesis,‘t’ test for difference of means was used at 5% level.The analysis revealed that the sportsmen selected as subjects for the present study were on the high in self confidence levels and that there were no significant differences between sportsmen belonging to individual sports and team sports groups in their mean self-confidence scores thus the hypothesis formulated for the present study was rejected. The investigator recommended that ;•Self confidence levels of elite sportsmen may be studied and compared with subjects from other sports groups and•Studies on self-confidence of sportspersons based on training age may be considered for further research.