Mental skills of Greek archers: Bebetsos 2015 study

Seventy Greek archers, 48 men and 22 women aged between 12 and 49 (mean 25.0), filled in a questionnaire on psychological skills before competing at the 2011 Greek national championships. The instrument, the ACSI-28, measures seven factors with four items each on a scale from 1 to 6.

Comparing three age bands, two factors differ: freedom from worry, where the youngest group, 12 to 16, scores 4.4 and the oldest, 25 and over, scores 3.7, and peaking under pressure, where the youngest scores 3.1 and the oldest 4.1. Comparing three bands of competitive experience, three factors differ, in each case between those with six or more years of competition and those with one or two: freedom from worry (4.4 against 3.7), concentration (5.4 against 4.7) and confidence (4.7 against 3.9). Between men and women no difference appears on any of the seven factors, which the author relates to the fact that in Greece archers of both sexes train on the same ranges with the same coaches.

The author concludes that older athletes control their emotions better and worry less. In the figures he reports, however, freedom from worry rises with experience and falls with age, and the two differences carry the same values with the sides swapped.

One questionnaire, completed before competition, with no performance measure at all: shooting scores do not enter the study. The instrument is the Greek version of the ACSI-28, already used in two earlier Greek studies that had confirmed its structure, with 28 items on a scale from 1 (never) to 6 (always) and seven factors: coping with adversity, peaking under pressure, goal setting and mental preparation, concentration, freedom from worry, confidence and coachability. Athletes also reported their sex, age and years of competition.

The sample is split into three age bands (12 to 16, 23 people; 17 to 24, 19; 25 and over, 28) and three experience bands (one or two years, 26 people; three to five, 21; six or more, 23). The comparisons are univariate analyses factor by factor, with Scheffé's test to identify which groups differ. Internal consistency of the scales runs from 0.60 to 0.76, which the author attributes to each factor resting on only four items.

The study measures no performance. It reports how seventy archers answer a questionnaire and how the answers shift with age and experience, and nothing more: a link to scores does not exist in the data. Age and experience are also not separated, and in a sample running from 12 to 49 the two classifications end up overlapping.

The statistics are reported incompletely. The F values are there, the degrees of freedom are printed with a full stop in place of a comma, and there is not a single p value. For confidence the degrees of freedom are given as 2 and 109, which cannot be right with seventy people. Internal consistency of the scales is modest, as low as 0.60. The freedom from worry factor runs in opposite directions depending on whether age or experience is in view, with the same two numbers, 4.4 and 3.7, in reversed order, and the discussion comments on only one of the two readings; from the text there is no way to tell which way round that scale was scored.

Calling a national championship field elite, in a country where the author himself writes that archery is little practised, and with athletes who have as little as one year of competition behind them, is generous. He closes by acknowledging that the instrument measures positive self-evaluation and that respondents may wish to present themselves more favourably. The paper, finally, was received in 2012, accepted in 2013 and published in 2015, and describes a competition held in 2011.

For an archer the study offers nothing to do and one thing to know: among archers who compete, answers to a psychological skills questionnaire shift with experience more than with age, and do not shift between men and women. Those with more years of competition report more concentration and more confidence. Since no scores were collected, nothing here says those answers measure something that makes anyone shoot better, and nothing says which way the relation runs: an archer still on the line after six years of competition may simply be the one who was at ease there from the start.

There is, though, one piece of information about the instrument, useful to anyone reading this literature. The ACSI-28 turns up often in studies of archers, and here its seven scales, four items each, show modest internal consistency; the author himself notes that it measures coping skills more than performance skills. A high ACSI-28 score is not a high score on the target.