COMPETITIVE ANXIETY AND MATCH-BASED VOLLEYBALL SKILL PERFORMANCE AMONG CLUB ATHLETES: EVIDENCE FROM A LOCAL COMPETITIVE SETTING
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31949/ijoehm.v6i1.184Keywords:
Competitive anxiety, Volleyball, Match performance, Technical skill, Sport psychologyAbstract
Competitive anxiety is a psychological factor that may accompany athletes’ responses to competitive demands, but its relationship with technical performance may vary across athletes and competitive contexts. This study examined the association between competitive anxiety and match-based volleyball skill performance among senior athletes of the Mutiara Galuh Volleyball Club. We employed a quantitative exploratory correlational design. We assessed competitive anxiety using the Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT), and evaluated match-based performance through structured observation of four fundamental volleyball skills: service, passing/receiving, spiking/smashing, and blocking. Fourteen senior athletes included in the match line-up completed the anxiety assessment, while seven athletes who participated in the observed match provided complete paired observations for the inferential analysis. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Shapiro–Wilk test, and Spearman’s rank-order correlation at a significance level of .05. Competitive anxiety was predominantly moderate (M = 17.93, SD = 1.98), whereas match-based skill performance was relatively low (M = 33.73%, SD = 19.31%). The analysis showed a negligible and non-significant association between competitive anxiety and skill performance (rₛ = −.030, p = .949, N = 7). Thus, no statistically detectable linear association was observed between pre-competition competitive anxiety and aggregated technical performance in the paired sample. Given the very small analytical sample and single-match observation, interpret the finding as preliminary and context-specific evidence, rather than evidence that competitive anxiety is unrelated to volleyball performance generally. Future research should employ larger samples, repeated match observations, and more temporally sensitive psychological and performance measures to better examine the dynamic relationship between psychological responses and technical execution during competition.
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