EXPLAINING PERFORMANCE VARIANCE - THE RELATIVE CONTRIBUTION OF INTENSITY AND DIRECTION DIMENSIONS OF COMPETITIVE STATE ANXIETY

This study examined the intensity (i.e., level) and direction (i.e., d ebilitative/facilitative) of competitive state anxiety and self-confid ence and relationships with performance, in order to determine the rel ative contribution that these dimensions make to explaining performanc e variance. A longitudinal design was employed to permit a within-subj ects analysis of both the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI- 2) and performance data. The inventory included the original scale plu s a direction scale in which subjects rated the degree to which the ex perienced intensity was either facilitative or debilitative to subsequ ent performance. Ten subjects comprising the Loughborough University m en's basketball squad completed the modified CSAI-2 20 minutes prior t o each of six league matches. The objective measure of basketball perf ormance employed was that developed by Sonstroem and Bernardo (1982). Standardized scores were computed for all subjects' modified CSAI-2 an d performance scores in order to negate between-subject response varia tion. Subsequent polynomial trend analyses revealed that in the case o f cognitive anxiety, the intensity-performance relationship was best e xplained by an inverted-U relationship and accounted for 18.4% of the variance, whereas the direction-performance relationship was best expl ained by a positive linear relationship and accounted for 23.4% of the variance. Somatic anxiety direction also formed a positive linear rel ationship, explaining 17% of performance variance as compared to somat ic anxiety intensity which only explained less than 2%. The findings f or self-confidence intensity revealed an inverted-U relationship and a ccounted for 21.2% of performance variance. The findings provide furth er evidence of the importance of assessing performers' interpretations of the symptoms they are experiencing. This clearly has implications for the employment of conventional competitive anxiety questionnaires. For the most part, they represent merely a measure of certain cogniti ve and physiological symptoms which have been labelled as anxiety by t he individuals who have developed them.