Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 May 15:6:e4778.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.4778. eCollection 2018.

Latent profiles of elite Malaysian athletes' use of psychological skills and techniques and relations with mental toughness

Vellapandian Ponnusamy #  1 , Robin L J Lines  2 , Chun-Qing Zhang  3 , Daniel F Gucciardi #  2
Affiliations

Latent profiles of elite Malaysian athletes' use of psychological skills and techniques and relations with mental toughness

Vellapandian Ponnusamy et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Background: The majority of past work on athletes' use of psychological skills and techniques (PSTs) has adopted a variable-centered approach in which the statistical relations among study variables are averaged across a sample. However, variable-centered-analyses exclude the possibility that PSTs may be used in tandem or combined in different ways across practice and competition settings. With this empirical gap in mind, the purposes of this study were to identify the number and type of profiles of elite athletes' use of PSTs, and examine differences between these clusters in terms of their self-reported mental toughness.

Methods: In this cross-sectional survey study, 285 Malaysian elite athletes (170 males, 115 females) aged 15-44 years (M = 18.89, SD = 4.49) completed measures of various PSTs and mental toughness. Latent profile analysis was employed to determine the type and number of profiles that best represent athletes' reports of their use of PSTs in practice and competition settings, and examine differences between these classes in terms of self-reported mental toughness.

Results: Our results revealed three profiles (low, moderate, high use) in both practice and competition settings that were distinguished primarily according to quantitative differences in the absolute levels of reported use across most of the PSTs assessed in practice and competition settings, which in turn, were differentially related with mental toughness. Specifically, higher use of PSTs was associated with higher levels of mental toughness.

Conclusion: This study provides one of the first analyses of the different configurations of athletes' use of PSTs that typify unique subgroups of performers. An important next step is to examine the longitudinal (in) stability of such classes and therefore provide insight into the temporal dynamics of different configurations of athletes' use of PSTs.

Keywords: Latent profile analysis; Mentally tough; Person-centered analysis; Psychological skills training.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Estimated means for psychological skills and techniques used in practice as a function of class membership.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Estimated means for psychological skills and techniques used in competition as a function of class membership.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Adler AB, Bliese PD, Pickering MA, Hammermeister J, Williams J, Harada C, Csoka L, Holliday B, Ohlson C. Mental skills training with basic combat training soldiers: a group-randomized trial. Journal of Applied Psychology. 2015;100(6):1752–1764. doi: 10.1037/apl0000021. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Anthony DR, Gucciardi DF, Gordon S. A meta-study of qualitative research on mental toughness development. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology. 2016;9(1):160–190. doi: 10.1080/1750984X.2016.1146787. - DOI
    1. Arthur CA, Fitzwater J, Hardy L, Beattie S, Bell J. Development and validation of a military training mental toughness inventory. Military Psychology. 2015;27(4):232–241. doi: 10.1037/mil0000074. - DOI
    1. Asparouhov T, Muthén B. Auxiliary variables in mixture modeling: a 3-step approach using Mplus. 2013. http://www.statmodel.com/examples/webnotes p. 15.http://www.statmodel.com/examples/webnotes Mplus Web Notes.
    1. Bell JJ, Hardy L, Beattie S. Enhancing mental toughness and performance under pressure in elite young cricketers: a 2-year longitudinal intervention. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology. 2013;2(4):281–297. doi: 10.1037/a0033129. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources