Relationship between Internal and External Acute Stressors and Coping Style.

Alsentali, Ahmed Mansour; Anshel, Mark H.

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which coping style is a function of internal and external sources of acute stress, and the extent to which appraisal (i.e., perceived control) mediates the relationships between sources of acute stress and coping style. Participants were 370 competitive male college athletes (M age = 21.2 yrs, SD = 2.45) from Saudi Arabia. An inventory, called the Sport Stress Appraisal-Coping Style Survey (SSACSS), was constructed for this study to test the relationships between the perceived intensity of internal and external stressors with respect to the athletes' cognitive appraisal of those stressors, called perceive controllability, and (approach or avoidance) coping style. The results revealed a nonsignificant relationship between internal stressors and perceived control of internal stressors, however, perceived control of internal stressors significantly predicted the athletes' coping style. The results also indicated no significant relationship between external stressors and perceived control, while perceived control of external stressors significantly predicted the athletes' coping style. The athletes tended to use more of an approach than avoidance coping style when responding to external stressors. Taken together, the results partially explain the tendency for skilled athletes, at least the Saudi Arabian male athletes in this study, to report high perceived control when experiencing internal stressors during the contest.

SAUDI Arabia; CONTROL (Psychology); PSYCHOLOGICAL adaptation; COLLEGE athletes; STATISTICAL correlation; PSYCHOMETRICS; QUESTIONNAIRES; REGRESSION analysis; SCALE analysis (Psychology); PSYCHOLOGICAL stress; MULTIPLE regression analysis; ELITE athletes; MALE athletes; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; PSYCHOLOGY

Journal of Sport Behavior, 2015, Vol 38, Issue 4, p357

0162-7341

Academic Journal