KEY WORDS: cognitive anxiety, gender differences, self-confidence, somatic anxiety.

The purpose of this investigation is twofold: (a) to examine anxiety level differences, before and during a game. (b) to examine anxiety level differences between genders in a team sport, (i.e. volleyball) as measured by the CSAI-2 (Martens, et al., 1990), in an effort to delineate anxiety and propose its relationship upon performance.

According to Endler as cited in Cox (1994) there are five different aspects associated with anxiety that are closely related to fear. These are 1). threat to self-esteem as a result of failure; 2). threat to personal harm; 3). unpredictability or fear of the unknown; 4). fear of disruption of daily habits; and 5.) fear of being negatively evaluated by others.

A volleyball player who experiences anxiety may worry about the uncertainty of not being placed in the starting line-up, serving or spiking out, getting blocked, playing a different position or being negatively evaluated by important others. Any or all of these factors may have serious consequences. Hence, sport psychologists need to examine the stress process and individual differences in reactions to anxiety to provide coaches and athletes with a clearer understanding of the anxiety response (Alexander and Krane, 1996; Cox, 1994).

It is thought that as the importance of the situation increases, cognitive anxiety will be influenced (Sewell & Edmondson, 1996; Alexander & Krane, 1996). Whilst somatic anxiety will decrease with the onset of competition (Alexander & Krane, 1996). It is also expected that before competition, anxiety in females will be higher in both the cognitive and somatic components and lower in self-confidence than their male counterparts, as indicated by several previous studies (Martens et al., 1990; Krane & Williams, 1994; Madden & Kirby, 1995; Sewell & Edmondson, 1996).

Thus the situation the athlete is placed in (objective demand), the evaluation of the situation (perceived threat) and the influence of anxiety on personality (the response) will affect anxiety. Therefore, if an athlete's perception of ability to respond is not equal to the demand perceived, anxiety will occur. It is expected that high levels of anxiety will not be evident in this investigation because it is a social team atmosphere.

20 females and 22 males participating in a mixed, social volleyball competition (42 participants), 19 to 45 years.

The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) developed by Martens, Vealey, Bump & Smith (1990) to assess state anxiety levels in competition. The CSAI-2 contains three subscales of cognitive, somatic anxiety and self-confidence.

The CSAI-2 is a questionnaire consisting of 27 sport related, multidimensional items. Each item is rated on a 4-point scale ranging from one ('not at all') to four ('very much so'). The lowest score possible for each subscale was 9 and the highest score was 36.

Liaison with the players occurred one week prior to testing. During this period, a verbal consent was received. Later, a written consent explaining the aims of the research was given to provide information and gain signatures from participants.

Players completed the CSAI-2 10 minutes prior to the onset of warm-up and competition. The game lasted for one hour and consisted of three sets. Players were given as long as needed to complete the questionnaire, hoever the questionaire was completed within 2-5 minutes.

The CSAI-2 was then administered for a second time to measure competitive state during the match. The second questionnaire was given after the first of the three sets and the same procedure occurred as before the match.

An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and a paired t-test were utilised by using the SPSS program. These tests were chosen to analyse gender, to analyse scores before competition and during competition and to analyse the relationships of the three subcomponents..

Using the ANOVA means that analysis of variance is not restricted/limited to analysing only two groups of scores, but allows analysis of the inter-relationships within all categories.

There was no significant differences between gender or anxiety levels before and during the game with regard to self-reported anxiety (Table 1). However, females became less confident (x = 28.75 to 27.05) and males became more confident (x = 27.45 to 27.55) during thegame. Also, both genders increased in somatic anxiety (female x = 10.7 to 12.8/ male x = 12.14 to 13.5). Whilst females decreased in the cognitive component scores (x = 14 to 12.7).

There is no significant difference between gender in the somatic, cognitive and self confident components before and during colleyball competition (Table 2). All values were larger than P<0.05 in each category (Table 2).

Table 3: Paired Samples Correlation for Anxiety Levels before and during the game.

There appears to be slight statistical significance in somatic anxiety (p = 0.37) when comparing pre/mid competition (Table 3). However the cognitive and self confident items showed no significance (p = 0.00).

One of the main aims of the study was to describe and compare the anxiety differences before and during competition and between genders. From this investigation, results were insignificant (p<0.05) for cognitive and somatic anxiety as well as self confidence before and during competition.

It should be noted that there was a slight change in somatic anxiety levels from pre-competition to mid-competition (0.037 level). The results showed a slight increase in somatic anxiety during competition, this is contrary to previous research, which states that somatic anxiety peaks prior to competition and then dissipates with the onset of competition (Sewell & Edmondson, 1996; Alexander & Krane, 1996; Prapavessis et al., 1991)..

This finding could be due to the non-specificity of the questions in the CSAI-2. The cues somatic anxiety is characterised by (rapid heart rate and muscle tension) are also associated with the onset of exercise. Therefore, when subjects are asked to rate 'my heart is racing', subjects could interpret this question as exercise induced rather than anxiety induced.

As the subjects examined did not play in a threatening environment, it was expected that elevated responses of state anxiety would not exist. For cognitive anxiety and self-cofidence, the results support the theory (as seen in table 3).

It was proven that self-confidence is higher in males than in their female counterparts (Meyers et al., 1987).

• results based on one game of volleyball for each team
• small sample size
• sample taken from a social competition

• trait anxiety could have been measured
• subject’s perceptions/performance expectancies of the game were not recorded

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E-mail correspondence: S. [email protected]