Psychological Profiles of Student Volleyball Athletes: Competitive Anxiety and Task–Ego Goal Orientation

Abstract

This study showed that competitive anxiety did not have a significant relationship with task orientation or ego orientation in student volleyball athletes, so the two research hypotheses did not receive empirical support. The study aimed to describe the level of competitive anxiety and goal orientation and analyze the relationship between competitive anxiety and both dimensions of goal orientation in junior high school boys’ volleyball athletes 22 Semarang. The study used a quantitative approach with a cross-sectional descriptive-correlational design involving 12 athletes. Competitive anxiety was measured using the Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT), while goal orientation was measured using the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Shapiro–Wilk test, the Spearman correlation as the main analysis, and the Pearson correlation as the sensitivity analysis. The results showed that 75.0% of the athletes were in the moderate anxiety category and 25.0% in the low category. Descriptively, task orientation (M = 3.90; SD = 0.37) was higher than ego orientation (M = 2.22; SD = 0.70). Spearman's analysis showed that competitive anxiety was almost unrelated to task orientation (ρ = 0.024; p = 0.942) and had a very weak and insignificant negative association with ego orientation (ρ = − 0.113; p = 0.727). Sensitivity analysis using Pearson provided a consistent pattern for the relationship between anxiety and task orientation (r = 0.128; p = 0.691) and ego orientation (r = − 0.203; p = 0.527). These findings suggest that competitive anxiety levels are not directly related to how athletes define success based on either task orientation or ego. The results need to be interpreted carefully because the sample size is limited and the internal consistency of some subscales is not optimal.

 Keywords: competitive anxiety; goal orientation; task orientation; ego orientation; student volleyball.