PSYCHOLOGICAL SKILLS - A CROSS-CULTURAL INVESTIGATION

The purpose of this investigation was to study the relationship betwee n selected independent variables (sport, nationality and gender) and p sychological skills of American and Chinese collegiate level athletes. The Psychological Skills Inventory for Sports (PSIS) was administered to a fixed sample of collegiate athletes from the United States and t he People's Republic of China. Subjects for this research were 350 Ame rican (USA) and Chinese collegiate athletes participating in the sport s of track and field, basketball, volleyball or swimming. A nationalit y by sport by gender (2 x 4 x 2) MANOVA resulted in significant main e ffects for nationality, sport, gender, and for the interactions betwee n nationality and sport and between sport and gender. Follow-up univar iate ANOVA's and post-hoc comparisons (LSD) were utilized to clarify s ignificant relationships. Overall, male athletes were observed to disp lay higher psychological skills scores than female athletes. Chinese a thletes displayed higher psychological skills scores than their Americ an counterparts in confidence, motivation and total psychological skil l.