Psychological preparation and levels of psychological difficulties of athletes in sport shooting

Abstract

The present study highlights the findings, based on which, through the analysis of psychological training, we have found the level of psychological difficulties in athletes in sport shooting. The research population consisted of 40 top sport shooters (n=40), male and female, aged 18-58 years (x = 26.8 ± 8.2 years), whose selection was conditioned by membership in the Slovak national team. We used an ad hoc questionnaire method to monitor the proportion of systematic psychological training and the level of selected psychological difficulties and to collect empirical data in top sport shooters. To determine the differences in the frequency of different types of responses, we used the method of inductive statistics: the chi-square goodness-of-fit test. We used this statistical method to evaluate the responses chosen by more than 10% of the respondents in each question. The resulting statistical significance of the chi-square goodness-of-fit test was assessed at the 5% (p ≤ 0.05) and 1% (p ≤ 0.01) levels of statistical significance. Statistically significant differences within the prevalence of psychological difficulties in athletes in sport shooting were observed at the 5% level in the case of psychosomatic difficulties (X2 = 8.16, P0.05 = 5.99) and also in the case of sleep disorders in athletes (X2 = 4.00, P0.05 = 3.84). We did not observe statistically significant differences in the athletes on the other dimensions of the levels of psychological distress examined.