Personality of elite archers: Lin 2018 study

Fifty-four male archers from three Chinese provinces (Shanghai, Shandong and Fujian), aged 19 to 25 and with 2 to 5 years of training, completed two questionnaires: Cattell's 16PF, which describes personality through sixteen factors, and the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ), whose five scales measure how much an athlete uses mental imagery and for what. The paper, written in Chinese with an English summary, reports the means of the sixteen factors and draws a profile from them: according to the author these archers are sociable, emotionally stable, disciplined and self-assured, but not much given to imagination or independence.

For mental imagery the table gives the highest means to the two cognitive scales (28.62 for specific imagery, the movement itself, and 28.28 for general imagery, strategy) and the lowest to specific motivation (21.00) and arousal (23.02). The author then reduces the 20 scales to nine factors, which account for 72.94% of the variance, and enters them in a regression on competition score. Two factors are linked to the score: the second (p = 0.039), loaded on tension, apprehension and vigilance, and the fifth (p = 0.047), which the author describes as independence, sensitivity and reasoning.

The data were collected in 2012 and published in 2018 in a set of conference proceedings. The archers are described as athletes of a good standard who had already achieved results in competition; the paper does not say what bows they used or which score served as the outcome (distance, number of arrows, event). The 16PF is reported as raw scores per factor; for the SIQ the paper gives the means of the five scales without saying which version was used.

For the analysis the author pooled the sixteen personality factors and four SIQ scales, checked that the data were suitable for factor analysis (KMO 0.659, significant Bartlett test) and extracted nine principal components. Using the component scores, plus the specific motivation scale, he fitted a linear regression on total score. There is no comparison group: the archers' profile is described only through the sample means.

The most serious limitation concerns the conclusion. In the regression the tension and apprehension factor has a positive coefficient (B = 11.183): in the data, archers higher on that factor scored more. The author nevertheless concludes that teams should select archers with low tension and low anxiety, the opposite of what the table shows. The make-up of the fifth factor does not add up either: the coefficient table gives the largest weight to openness to change (Q1, negative), which the text never mentions, and only a small weight to reasoning, which the text does name.

There are other inconsistencies. The text says the highest SIQ scale is mastery, at 28.62, while in the table that value belongs to specific cognitive imagery. The personality profile is built from raw scores with no comparison against the general population or athletes from other sports, so "high" and "low" are claims the reader cannot check. A factor analysis of 20 variables on 54 people is fragile, and ten predictors in a regression on 54 cases leave little room: the two significant results sit just under 0.05, with no correction for multiple comparisons. The sample is all male and the competition score is not defined.

For anyone who shoots, the study says little. It describes the average personality of a group of good Chinese archers, but with nothing to compare it against there is no knowing whether that profile is typical of archers, of athletes in general or simply of young men of that age. The link with score is weak and, read from the numbers in the table, runs the opposite way to the author's recommendation: it does not show that a calmer archer shoots better, nor the reverse.

The idea of selecting athletes with a personality questionnaire, which the paper puts forward, finds no support in these data: a test that explains a small and uncertain share of the score, in 54 people, is not enough to decide who should compete. For coaches, the most concrete part concerns mental imagery: according to the table, this group used imagery of the movement and of strategy more than imagery tied to motivation and arousal. It is a descriptive observation and does not say which use of imagery helps shooting most.