Self-esteem in archers: Husen 2025 study

The study describes the self-esteem and self-efficacy of 30 archers in West Java and compares men with women. The authors report high self-esteem overall and medium self-efficacy, but only the self-esteem scores appear in the tables. The men (17) had a mean self-esteem score of 158.29, the women (13) 147.92: a difference of about 10 points, significant on a t-test (t = 2.144, p = 0.041).

On self-efficacy the difference between the sexes was not significant (p = 0.089), although the men had higher mean ranks (18.06 against 12.15). The group was very mixed: 10 shot recurve, 7 compound, 12 the "standard" bow of the Indonesian national division and one barebow; 26 had been training for more than a year and all had competed.

The authors selected athletes by purposive sampling from those registered in West Java in 2025, with at least a year of competition or at least one event behind them. Both questionnaires were completed online. The self-esteem one, built on Coopersmith's model, has 50 statements with four response options, from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree", and five dimensions (significance, competence, power, virtue, worthiness). The self-efficacy one, based on Bandura, has 50 statements with four levels of confidence and three dimensions (magnitude, strength, generality). In a trial on 29 athletes, three items from the first and four from the second did not meet the validity threshold and were removed.

Men and women were compared with a t-test for self-esteem and, for self-efficacy, with a Mann-Whitney test, because the variances of the two groups differed (Levene's test, p = 0.003).

Thirty people are few for comparing two groups, and the study measures nothing about shooting: neither scores nor competition results, so it says nothing about whether self-esteem or self-efficacy relate to performance. The categories "high" and "medium" are not defined: there are no cut-offs, and no self-efficacy means. The group mixes four bow types and different levels, and we cannot tell whether the difference between men and women comes from sex or from how men and women were spread across divisions and experience.

The tables contain several errors. In the t-test the significance is printed as 0.41 instead of 0.041, and the mean difference is given as 4.837, which is the standard error of the difference (the difference itself is 10.37). The normality table repeats the means instead of the test values. For self-efficacy, a Z of -1.821 corresponds to a p of about 0.07, not 0.089: the conclusion does not change, but the figure does not add up. The authors themselves flag the risk that, with an online questionnaire, answers drift towards what seems desirable.

For archers and coaches the study offers a snapshot of a small regional group, not a conclusion. The women reported slightly lower self-esteem than the men, while on confidence in their own ability in competition the difference was not significant; but with 30 people, four bow types and an online questionnaire, the difference may come from many factors the study does not control, such as the different ways men and women tend to describe themselves on questionnaires.

The authors suggest more individual work on self-esteem with female athletes: this is their proposal, and the data did not test it. In the registry the source counts as a description of how some Indonesian archers see themselves, to be read alongside studies that link these measures to scores.