Types of Imagery Associated with Sport Confidence in recreational Soccer Players

Types of Imagery Associated with Sport Confidence in recreational Soccer Players

Results

Descriptive statistics

Item means for Phase 1 ranged between 2.65 to 5.47 and all standard deviations exceeded a value of 1. Overall, the data indicated that participants utilized all choices within the Likert scale range. Univariate normality and multivariate normality, both skewness and kurtosis, were tested with the PRELIS program 8.53 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2002) and indicated that 14 items were positively skewed.

Howell, 2000; Tabachnick&Fidell 2001). In samples less than 5,000, violations of normality do not make a substantial difference in multivariate analysis generally and structural equation modeling in particular (Olsson et al., 2000). The estimates of internal consistency reliability using the weighted omega (Bacon et al., 1995) for each of the four latent variables (described below) were Appearance-Health imagery .93, Exercise Self-efficacy .82, Exercise Technique .90, and Exercise Feelings .82. When separate Appearance Imagery and Health Imagery factors were computed the results were .89 and .74 respectively.

Correlational analyses

The next purpose of Phase 3 was to assess correlations between exercise behavior, exercise self-efficacy, and the EII subscales. Reported here are only the results of the four-factor model because as presented above very little was gained by separating the Appearance-Health Outcome Imagery scale into two separate factors. As shown in Table 6, small to moderate correlations were observed between the variables under investigation. Of most interest here is the pattern of associations between exercise behavior (MET), the EII subscales, and exercise self-efficacy. As shown, MET scores demonstrated small but significant correlations with the EII subscales that ranged between .13 (MET and Appearance-Health Imagery) and .17 (MET and Exercise Feelings).With regard to associations between the EII subscales and the Barriers Self-efficacy scale the correlations ranged between .27 (Barriers Self-efficacy and Appearance- Health Imagery) and .44 (Barriers Self-efficacy and Exercise Technique). The Barriers Self-Efficacy scale exhibited a correlation of .33 with the EII subscale Exercise Self-Efficacy.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to investigate why heptathletes believe their use of imagery is effective. All participants in the study indicated imagery was effective inenhancing their performance; however, all the imagery they employed was not considered to be equally effective. Imagery effectiveness varied as a result of fourmain factors: relevance, quality, temporal factors and mental state.

The athletes indicated that the more relevant their images were to their performance, the more effective those images were. Specifically, the athletes indicated using imagery helped reduce pre-competition anxiety, thus motivational general-arousal imagery was described as being relevant to performance. Several imagery research studies employing quantitative methods have reported athletes use the motivational specific function of imagery least often and it is the least effective function of imagery (Hall et al., 1998; Weinberg et al., 2003). The athletes in the present study indicated images of long-term goals were not relevant to an immediate competition. Images of achieving long terms goals were too far away for the imagery to be effective; images that were most related to the present situation, those that were ...