Evaluating Psychological Traits of Taekwondo Athletes Competing in World Classes and League superior

Abstract

The present research deals with psychological traits of Taekwondo athletes in global and division classes. The study population included all taekwondo athletes in Iran. The research sample involves 110 taekwondo athletes (54 in world class: world and Olympic medalist and 56 in division one) were chosen as per systematic sampling. For data collection, questionnaire sports oriented Gale (1998), NEO-Five Factor Inventory, Short Form (NEO) - Subject Follow-up (Costa and McGraw, 1985), mental skills assessment questionnaire (Durand Bush and Salmela, 2001) and Anxiety Inventory (Martens, 1977) were used. After determining descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), the data were analyzed through one-way ANOVA at the significant level (P<0.05) using SPSS version 21. The results showed that there is significant difference between both groups (motivation) development, mental skills and competitive anxiety and in personality factors except neuroticism there were no significant differences between the two groups. Overall, the results denote on the superiority of world-class athletes compared to division one in psychological characteristic.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2016.v6n2p133