Comparison of selected psychological variables among different levels of table tennis players

Abstract

Objective: The objective of the study is to know the psychological state i.e. Personality Trait and Competitive State Anxiety among State Level and University Level table tennis players. Methods: To serve the purpose of the investigation, 30 male table tennis players were selected i.e. 15 players from Madhya Pradesh State level table tennis players and 15 players from University participated levels at the age group between 19 to 24 years. The Big five Inventory Personality Traits developed by John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999) and Competitive State Anxiety developed by Martens, Vealey, and Burton (1990) were used to assess the personality and state anxiety level of the selected subjects. The descriptive statistics and One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with SPSS software 20 version was also used to analyze the data at .05 level of confidence. Results: The mean and standard deviation of the factors of personality traits of State Level and University Level players are as follows; Extraversion (24.87±4.97) & (28.07±4.43), Agreeableness (31.13±4.96) & (29.87±3.60), Conscientiousness (30.67±5.60) & (30.67±4.98), Neuroticism (22.60±5.93) & (23.40±5.14) and Openness (34.40±5.83) & (33.80±6.61). There were no significant difference was found on factors of personality trait between the two levels of players, as the calculated ‘f-value’ of Extraversion (2.94), Agreeableness (0.01), Consciousness (0.00), Neuroticism (0.03) and Openness (0.30) were less than the tabulated ‘f-value’ (4.20). And the mean and standard deviations of state level and university levels table tennis players of Competitive State Anxiety are as follows; Cognitive State Anxiety (22.00±5.90) & (21.87±5.41), Somatic state anxiety (20.40±4.26) & (19.27±6.83) and Self-confidence (24.67±6.06) & (23.53±5.89). There were no significant difference was found on factors of Competitive Anxiety between the two levels of players, as the calculated ‘f-value’ of Cognitive state anxiety (0.00), somatic state anxiety (0.29) and Self-confidence (0.27) were less than the tabulated ‘f-value’ (4.20). Conclusion: the present study shows that the players of the state and university level have similar level of competitive state anxiety and personality trait. Further it also recommend that same study could be done with the elite level players or by increasing the sample size or comparison with the beginners to get better knowledge regarding the similarities exists in the present study.