Self-Efficacy and Hardiness in National and State Level Sports Players

Abstract

Pursuing a sport as a career is a growing trend among the youth of today. An increasing number of adolescents are dedicating themselves to a sport that they have been passionate about since childhood. The purpose of this research was to determine if there is a significant relationship between self-efficacy and hardiness and to determine if there are any significant effects of level (national level and state level)and gender of the sports players on self-efficacy, hardiness and the three dimensions of hardiness (viz., dimension of commitment, dimension of control and dimension of challenge). A purposive sampling method was employed to select the sports players, aged between 17-22 years, and involved in a number of sports that require vigorous physical exercise. The General Self-Efficacy Scale (Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1992) and the Hardiness Questionnaire (Maddi, 2004) were administered to the participants. The results revealed that there is a significant negative relationship between self-efficacyand hardiness in the state level female sports players. The study also reported that the national level sports players were significantly higher than the state level sports players with respect to self-efficacy. However, no significant effect of gender of the sports players on self-efficacy was observed. Moreover, the findings revealed no significant effects of level and gender of the sports players on hardiness, dimension of commitment, dimension of control and dimension of challenge. Such a study highlights the need to encourage and channelize the competitive spirit of sports players so that they are able to bring more laurels to the nation.