Personality traits, psychological skills, and skills level among amateur archers in Hong Kong

Abstract

Previous studies on the psychological aspect of archery are rather limited. The current study investigated the psychological characteristics - personality traits and psychological skills among amateur archers in Hong Kong. The results indicated that personality traits and demographic factors have certain statistical predictive power on the psychological skills adopted by archers. Moreover, the use of psychological skills and strategies has a certain statistical predictive power for identifying archers who perform better. In addition, the patterns of strategies and psychological skills used by archers with different personality traits were investigated in the study. Some results were in line with the results from previous studies. New discoveries were found that were specific to the sport of archery.

Seventy-two (25 females and 47 males, aged 36.07±12.61) amateur archers from Hong Kong volunteered to participate in the study. The participants responded to the NEO Five-Factor Inventory and the Test of Performance Strategies. Results from a series of data analyses using SPSS 22 indicated that the demographic variables, the big five personality traits, the use of psychological skills and strategies, and skills level were associated with one another in a certain degree. Stepwise multiple regression analysis suggested that both personality traits alone and personality coupled with demographic variables accounted for different levels of variance in the use of psychological skills. First, the neuroticism personality trait contributed the most in accounting for the differences in the use of psychological skills and strategies in the competition dimension, followed by conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion. After including demographic variables in the procedure, an increase was noted in the total amount of variance explained. The length of experience and neuroticism both contributed a lot to the amount of variance explained, followed by conscientiousness, type of bow used, openness, agreeableness, and sex. On the practice scales, conscientiousness accounted for the largest proportion of the variance explained, followed by neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness. When demographic variables were included, the amount of variance explained increased. Additional predictors were conscientiousness, the length of experience, neuroticism, type of bow used, extraversion, sex, and age.

In the investigation into the significant role of psychological skills and strategies outcomes, results from binary regression analyses demonstrated significant predictive power for the use of psychological skills and strategies between archers with the highest skills level and their less-skilled counterparts. Automaticity was found to be essential in defining archers' skills level in both the competition and practice dimensions. The regression models explained a range of 6.1% to 12.7% of variance accounted for skills level, and the model successfully classified 58.3% to 63.9% of cases per time. These findings link back to a number of skills learning theories that it is common to find the automatic stage of skill performance at the most advanced stage of learning (Haywood, 2006). In addition, the results suggest that coaches and sports psychologists could consider the individual differences in personality traits and the use of psychological skills and strategies to facilitate athletes' need and improve their archery performance. Implications of the results are discussed.