Coping strategies preferred by adolescents when managing stress in sport - pilot study

The aim of the study, which was carried out as a part of the research grant project "Psychological aspects of managing stress by top athletes in adolescence", was to map the occurrence of psychological aspects of possible overtraining in adolescent athletes in the Czech socio-cultural environment and to verify possible connections between the perceived level of training stress and coping strategies preferred by adolescent athletes, focusing on the relationship between the level of perceived stress and intensity of training. The study also aims to verify basic psychometric characteristics of the used methods for the purpose of follow-up research. A quantitative design was used to carry out this research as well as a combination of three self-assessment methods: Training Distress Scale; Profile of Mood States and Children's Coping Strategies Checklist. The research file contained 230 respondents aged 14-20 years: 147 boys (64%) and 83 girls (36%). The average age was 16.4 years. The most represented sports were football (N=72; 31%), athletics (N=25; 11%) and ice-hockey (N=17; 7%). Most of the respondents were members of sport clubs (N=177; 77%), 21 athletes were (9%) representatives of the CR in that particular sport and the most numbered group of respondents have been doing the sport for more than eight years (67%). The results showed a statistically significant difference between felt symptoms of overstrain after the training and in the following 24 hours. Respondents most often described the following combinations of emotional states in connection with the perceived stress: anger and depression; depression and tiredness; and confusion and tension. As far as coping strategies are concerned, respondents reached the highest average score in the Active strategy (2.44) and Strategy of avoiding (2.38) scales, which are more often practiced by athletes reporting a higher level of perceived stress. The highest scores were reached by respondents on the Direct problem-solving (M = 2.66) and Cognitive decision-making (M = 2.50) sub-scales. (C) 2016 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.uk