A Comparative Study of Coping Behaviour among National Male Handball Players Based on their Achievements
Author : Vijay Singh Ratnakar and Dr. Ganesh Khandekar
Abstract :
Coping strategies used by athletes to manage stress are essential for their sports performance. Under the domain of sports psychology, the researcher tried to evaluate the coping strategies used by athletes concerning their sports performance but studies in this regard on handball players are negligible. The present study compared coping strategies of medal winner and non-medal winner national male handball players. To conduct the study 100 national/interuniversity male handball players were selected. The sample includes 50 national male handball players from medal-winning teams while 50 national male handball players were selected from teams not able to win a medal in the tournaments. To assess coping behaviour, a scale prepared by Srivastava (2001) was used. This scale assesses five coping strategies namely behavioural approach coping strategies, cognitive approach coping strategies, cognitive behavioural approach coping strategies, behavioural avoidance coping strategies and cognitive avoidance coping strategies respectively. Results reveal that the use of a behavioural approach to reducing stress was significantly higher in medal winner national male handball players as compared to non-medal winner male handball players. The use of behaviour avoidance coping strategy and cognitive avoidance coping strategies was significantly higher in non-medal winner male handball players as compared to medal winner male handball players. The difference in the use of cognitive approach coping strategies and cognitive behavioural coping strategies between the two groups were not found to be statistically significant. Hence it can be concluded that the superior performance of medal-winner male handball players is due to their preference for problem focussed coping strategies.
Keywords :
Coping behaviour, handball, achievements
