This study aimed to explore the psychological factors affecting sports performance and their purposes as perceived by adolescent athletes. Study data were collected by conducting an open-ended survey with 232 student athletes from adolescent athletes in S city. The collected data were categorized using content analysis, which was conducted twice to explore the psychological factors affecting sports performance and their purposes. From 537 answers, 30 performance-affecting psychological factors—including confidence, endurance, effort/dedication, optimal tension, and social support—were identified, and they were classified into five categories: psychological fundamental, mental toughness, motivation, emotional stability, and social relationships. From 588 answers, the purposes of the psychological factors were identified, including performance achievement, motivation enhancement, demonstrating mental toughness, cognitive strategy, confidence increase, emotional regulation, injury prevention, game strategy, and reinforcement cohesion. These performance-affecting psychological factors and their purposes may serve as a reference to understand how secondary school students perceive the relationships among various psychological factors and the relationship between the psychological factors and performance. This study is expected to inform goal setting and content organization in psychological skills training.
This study was to explore and confirm factors of sport psychology counseling needs in Korean elite coaches. In order to achieve this purpose, 56 elite coaches in Korean Olympic training center at Taereung and Jincheon responded on open-questionnaire and 260 coaches responded on survey. Open-ended questionnaire responses were analyzed by inductive content analysis and collected survey data were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis. The results were as follows: Firstly, sport psychology counseling needs of elite coaches were competition preparation, negative athlete-coach relationship, athlete private problems, performance degradation, pressure on performance result, injury management, team cohesion degradation, motivation, training management, different gender athlete control, athletes drop out, pressure from outside, conflicts with colleagues, neglecting from athletes, feeling of incompetence, emotional control problem, and so on. Secondly, based on these responses, closed-ended questionnaire was developed, surveyed, and analyzed. Exploratory factor analysis illustrated that sports counseling needs of coaches were performance enhancement strategies, unreasonable pressure, negligence on training, coaching stress, competition result stress, conflicts with athletes. Finally, confirmatory factor analysis showed that construct of sport counseling needs illustrated appropriate fit indices values. The results of this study contributed to provide fundamental information on coaching education program and sport psychology counseling program development and application. Consequently, it will help coaches to control their mind at coaching in training and competitions.
