Coping with performance worries among youth male cricket players.

Holt, Nicholas L. ; Mandigo, James L.

The manner in which children cope with stressors is an important factor that influences adaptive patterns of growth and development (Compas, 1987). One social arena where children may experience psychosocial stress is via participation in organized youth sport (Gould & Eklund, 1996). Descriptive research indicates that children's motives for participating in a variety of sports are based on experiencing feelings of competence (e.g., learning new skills), affiliation (e.g., making friends), competition (e.g., to win), and fun (e.g., for excitement) (Weiss, 2000). Despite these appealing motives there are also a range of negative outcomes associated with youth sport participation, including decreased fun and satisfaction (Scanlan & Lewthwaite, 1984); physical injury (Smith, Smoll, & Ptacek, 1990); deteriorated performance (Gould, Eklund, Petlichkoff, Peterson, & Bump, 1991); burnout (Smith, 1986); and, ultimately sport withdrawal (Petlichkoff, 1996).

Negative outcomes arising from youth sport participation may be related, at least in part, to the presence of contextual and performance stressors. Stressors associated with youth sport include: Too much pressure, dislike of coach/coach criticisms of player, lack of fun, overemphasis on winning, fear of injury, conflicts with opponents, physical/mental errors, and, parental pressure through their over-involvement and unreasonable expectations for children to succeed (Anshel & Delany, 2001; Crocker & Isaak, 1997; Gould & Eklund, 1996; Goyen & Anshel, 1998: Klint & Weiss, 1986; Scanlan & Lewthwaite, 1984).

Whereas some of these stressors reflect psychosocial concerns relating to the wider youth sport context (e.g., parental pressure, dislike of coach), others are more direct performance concerns reflecting the demands of competition (e.g., injury, physical/mental errors). Performance concerns reflect the notion of worry. Worry is a central component in the competitive sport anxiety process (Smith, Smoll, & Wiechman, 1998), and is considered as a chain of (relatively uncontrollable) negative thoughts that are negatively affect laden (Borkovec, Robinson, Pruzinsky, & DePree, 1983). Worry is often referred to as 'cognitive anxiety' and empirical findings suggest that worry has a debilitating effect on performance (cf. Dunn & Causgrove-Dunn, 2001). As such, some of the factors that have been termed 'sources of stress' in youth sport may represent antecedents of worry as they relate directly to the competitive environment.

Research indicates that some children dropout of sport because they experience 'too much stress' and 'not enough fun' (Klint & Wiess, 1986). In fact, drop-out rates for organized youth sport programs average up to 35% in a given year (Gould & Petlichkoff, 1988). It is clearly important to understand how children cope with competitive sport experiences (Crocker, Hoar, McDonough, Kowalski, & Neifer, in press). Despite the promotion of youth coping as an important area of study in both sport and non-sport domains, little is known about the nature of coping during childhood and adolescence (Compas, 1998; Compas, Connor-Smith, Saltzman, Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2001). Whereas sources of stress in youth sport have been identified, the adaptive and maladaptive coping patterns employed by youth sport participants have yet to be adequately examined (Crocker et al., in press; Crocker & Isaak, 1997; Kowalski & Crocker, 2001).

Coping represents cognitive, affective, and behavioral efforts to manage specific internal and external demands (Crocker, Kowalski, & Graham, 1998; Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Adopting a developmental perspective, coping can be located as a subset of broader self-regulatory processes and defined as: "Conscious volitional efforts to regulate emotion, cognition, behavior, physiology, and the environment in response to stressful events or circumstances. These regulatory processes both draw on and are constrained by the biological, cognitive, social, and emotional development of the individual" (Compas et al., 2001, p. 89).

There is general agreement that the process of coping involves procedures that are directed at managing the stressor and/or the self in relation to the stressor (Losoya, Eisenberg, & Fabes, 1998). At the macro-level, coping researchers have made important distinctions between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Problem-focused coping typically involves strategies to manage or alter the problem that is causing anxiety. Emotion-focused coping involves regulating emotional responses resulting from a stressor. Micro-level analysis has suggested that the two basic coping dimensions can be further divided based on specific functions of coping. Problem-focused coping can be separated into categories such as problem-solving, planning, information seeking, suppression of competing behavior, and increasing efforts. Emotion-focused coping includes mental and behavioral withdrawal, denial, relaxation, self-blame, avoidance, acceptance, and wishful thinking (Crocker et al., 1998). In operationalizing these concepts, it is useful to distinguish between coping methods and coping goals. Methods are ways of acting or thinking (i.e., coping strategies/techniques) and goals are the ends toward which methods of coping are directed (i.e., coping function).

The most widely used model of coping in sport psychology is the transactional process perspective (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). This model posits that coping involves interaction between an individual's situational appraisal and coping responses. Lazarus and Folkman distinguished between primary and secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal refers to how an individual evaluates the personal significance of a situation with regards to his/her values, personal beliefs, situational intentions, and goal commitments. The term goal commitment implies that a person will strive hard to attain a goal despite discouragement or adversity, and it is considered to be the most important appraisal variable because without goal commitment the individual has nothing at stake (Lazarus, 1999). If the individual appraises that his/her goals are at stake, an emotional response occurs and the outcomes are perceived in terms of harm/loss (i.e., damage has already occurred), threat (i.e., the possibility that damage may occur), or challenge (i.e., where people enthusiastically pit themselves against obstacles) (Lazarus, 1999).

Secondary appraisal refers to a cognitive-evaluative process that focuses on what can be done about a stressful person-environment relationship, especially when there has been a primary appraisal of harm/loss or threat. In essence, this secondary appraisal represents an evaluation of coping options rather than the implementation of actual coping responses. That is, secondary appraisal provides the cognitive underpinning for coping (Lazarus, 1999). The differences between primary and secondary appraisal are not necessarily temporal, and Lazarus proposed that it is the active interplay between primary and secondary appraisal that produces coping responses. Thus, the combined processes of primary and secondary appraisal that are utilized by an individual include questions such as, 'Do I need to act? What shall I do? Which coping option is best?' Lazarus acknowledged that primary and secondary appraisal may be difficult to distinguish empirically.

Although the original transactional process perspective (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) was not directly oriented toward coping among youth, recent theoretical writings have been more sensitive to a developmental coping perspective (e.g., Aldwin, 1994; Lazarus, 1999). Indeed, Lazarus (1999) encouraged researchers to apply his coping framework to the study of children. There have been some attempts to understand coping in youth sport contexts. For example, Crocker and Isaak (1997) examined 25 swimmers (age 10-16 years) using the sport modified version of the COPE inventory (Crocker, 1992) to assess if they used a consistent coping style during three competitions and training sessions in a one week period after the competitions. Although swimmers used active coping patterns consistently for races, results showed that they exhibited different coping patterns across training and competitive situations.

Goyen and Anshel (1998) examined gender differences in sources of acute stress and coping processes for adolescent athletes (M age = 15.4 years, SD = 1.61). Results revealed that following a performance-related stressor (e.g., making a mistake), males experienced significantly higher acute stress than females. Compared to males, females experienced more acute stress from social comparison. Females used emotion-focused coping after stressors, whereas males preferred problem-focused coping. Thus, adolescent males and females appeared to appraise and cope with stressors differently.

Anshel and Delany (2001) used structured interviews and checklists to describe cognitive appraisal and concomitant coping strategies used by 52 youth sport participants (aged 10-12 years). Results showed that positive appraisals of a situation resulted in approach coping, whereas negative appraisals (most frequently related to a bad call by the referee or making a mistake) tended to produce avoidance coping. As adolescent coping research in sport psychology is in its infancy, care must be taken generalizing from the results found to date. Crocker and Isaak (1997) suggested that research examining coping by young athletes must be replicated and extended across sport populations.

A recurrent theme in the study of youth coping is poor measurement of coping responses to stress in both non-sport (Ayers, Sandler, West, & Roosa, 1996; Compas et al., 2001) and sport settings (Crocker et al., in press; Kowalski & Crocker, 2001). Recent reviews suggest that coping measures must be based on relevant coping constructs that are clearly identified (Crocker et al., 1998). For example, coping theorists in general psychology have been criticized for "putting the psychometric cart before the exploratory, descriptive horse" (Somerfield, 1997, p. 146). Given the lack of research concerning children's sport coping there is a need for descriptive evidence that reveals information about the nature and content of coping among children (Crocker et al., 1998; Lazarus, 1999). At the most fundamental level, it is not clear what types of coping strategies youth sport participants use during stressful situations.

Qualitative research methods provide an alternative line of investigation that will help further coping research (Crocker et al., 1998; Lazarus, 1999). In particular, qualitative research may be useful for providing descriptive evidence relating to the nature and content of children's coping in sport. Although Lazarus encouraged researchers to consider factors that characterize youth coping, the notion of children's coping in sport has yet to be widely examined. As such, the first purpose of this study was to identify perceptions of performance-related worries among male youth cricket players. The second purpose was to examine the nature, extent, and function of associated coping experiences deployed by youth sport participants to manage performance-related worries.

Method

Participants

Junior members of a cricket club in Wales (UK) participated in this study (N = 33, M age = 11.9 years, SD = 1.5 years). The participants possessed an average of 2.97 years playing experience (SD = 1.33). All players experienced at least one competitive game and one practice per week during the cricket season (although participants could play up to three games in a given week). All participants were Caucasian, drawn from a rural community, and mainly working class.

Procedure

The club secretary and head coach of the cricket club in question were contacted with the research proposal and they gave their permission for the research to proceed. The lead researcher bad obtained a Criminal Record Bureau Disclosure and was checked against the Child Sex Offender's 'List 99' in the UK. Prior to the study parents were provided with an information letter and consent form and given opportunities to ask the lead researcher questions about the study. Written informed consent was provided by each team coach, one or both parents, and the children themselves before the research commenced. Participants were withdrawn from their regular training session by age group to meet with the researcher in a private room in the team clubhouse. One team coach sat outside the meeting room (with the door left open) during each session. Each group were then given the same set of instructions by the same researcher in order to complete the concept map exercise.

Data Collection

Concept maps. Concept maps (Novak & Gowan, 1984) were used as an open-ended questionnaire collection technique that involves a seed idea, from which respondents generate ideas that represent their own experiences (See Figure 1 for an example of a completed pair of concept maps). This technique has been used in a previous investigation in youth sport and it appears to be developmentally appropriate (Strean & Holt, 2000). The first concept map used in the present study contained the seed statement "things I worried about when playing cricket recently." Participants were instructed by the researcher to "think about some of the things you have worried about when playing cricket over the past two weeks. Make sure you remember something that actually happened. Think about who you were playing against, when, and where the game took place." Participants were then given a second map that contained the seed statement "what 1 did to deal with each of these worries." Again, participants were instructed to recall their actual experiences and describe how they "dealt with each of these worries." In this way, participants linked their subsequent coping responses to the previously identified performance worries.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

It was emphasized to the participants that they should record actual experiences to reduce bias toward aggregated or dispositional reporting (Ayers et al., 1996). It was also emphasized to the participants that they should report what they actually did to cope with the performance-worries, that there were no 'right or wrong' answers, and that all responses were confidential. Each pair of concept maps took approximately 20 minutes to complete. In sum, 66 concept maps were completed. The total number of reported responses on both concept maps were 256 (M- 7.76 responses per participant).

Data Analysis

All written responses on the concept maps were transcribed verbatim and subjected to an inductive qualitative data analysis procedure (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994), which was completed by the first author. The process of data analysis included the following steps: (a) following verbatim transcription of the concept maps, the data were coded to ensure confidentiality and read several times; (b) individual meaning units were identified from the raw data through a process of line-by-line micro-analysis; (c) similar meaning units were grouped together and assigned an essence phrase that conveyed the essential meaning contained in the theme. For example, all raw data extracts that reflected the notion of 'getting out' were placed in that theme and an appropriate essence phrase was attached (i.e., 'theme refers to concerns about getting out while batting'). Finally. (d) throughout the analytic process each group of meaning units, each theme, and each folder was carefully assessed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to ensure that the meaning units in each theme and the themes in each category were distinct and appropriately categorized. That is, as each new unit of meaning was selected for analysis, it was compared with other units of meaning and subsequently grouped with similar units of meaning. If there were no similar units of meaning, a new theme was created. This process allows for the continuous refinement of the results (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

This analytic process was repeated for all the performance worries raw data extracts and all the coping responses raw data extracts (again by the first author working alone). Once a range of individual themes for performance worries and coping responses were identified, the number of responses in each theme was calculated as a percentage. The unit of analysis was the participant (i.e., the theme of 'getting out' was assigned a value of 30.77%, which reflects the proportion of participants who reported data that fit with the theme). Having established a range of themes (and calculated the percentage of respondents in each theme), two further analytic techniques were employed. First, coping themes were deductively classified by the function they were apparently intended to serve. That is, individual coping strategies were classified as either serving a problem-focused or emotion-focused coping function. Second, the coping strategies used to manage the three most frequently cited individual performance worries were identified and tallied. For example, all the reported coping strategies for managing the 'getting out' performance worry were identified and tallied to provide a breakdown of the relative proportions of different types of coping used in relation to that performance worry (see Figure 2 for an example of the outcomes of this process). The number of problem-focused strategies and emotion-focused strategies were then compared across the three main performance worry categories (i.e., getting out, bowling badly, fielding mistakes). Because the data was nominal, the Phi [phi] coefficient was calculated to establish any statistically significant differences between the types of coping strategies used to manage the three main performance worries.

Inter-rater reliability. Given that a lone researcher (i.e., the first author) completed data analysis, data were subjected to an audit check by the co-researcher. This procedure involved providing the co-researcher with a random selection of approximately 30% of the raw data units which he analyzed to ensure that each performance worry and each coping strategy was appropriately coded. Inter-rater reliability on coded performance worries and coping strategies was 92%, which was considered a suitably high level of consistency for the research to continue (Morse & Field, 1995). Coded coping strategies were then sent to two final-year PhD students (both with research programs in the area of youth coping) who were previously unconnected with this study (and were not studying with either of the authors). These experts were asked to classify each coping strategy by the function it was intended to serve (i.e., problem-focused or emotion-focused). Through a process of advocacy and discussion the two researchers and two expert coders came to agreement in terms of deductively classified coping strategies by intended function. In one case where consensus was not reached, the majority decision (i.e., 3 of 4) was used.

Results

A brief summary of each of the emergent themes (and the frequency by which they were cited) is provided. These descriptions include a statement explaining the performance worries/coping response that the themes are intended to represent, along with some examples of the coded raw data extracts. Performance worries are reported first, followed by emotion- and problem-focused coping strategies used to manage these worries. Finally, connections between performance worries and coping responses are presented.

Performance Worries Mistakes

Getting out (30.77%). This performance worry concerned 'getting out' while batting, which included "Getting out early and cheaply" "Getting out without scoring many runs" "Being out for a golden duck [i.e., first ball]" "Getting out on the first ball." Participants were also worried about "Getting out to a stupid ball" and "Getting badly out to a rubbish ball."

Dropping catches (20.51%). This theme relating to performance worries of dropping catches while fielding. In particular, participants were worried about dropping easy catches (e.g., "Dropping a catch, easy or hard. The easier the catch the worse it would be afterwards") and when under pressure (e.g., "Dropping the ball in a tense situation").

Bowling badly (14.53%). Bowling badly included inaccurate bowling (e.g., "Giving too many extras [i.e., extra runs] away" "Bowling wides or no balls [which result in extra runs]"), as well as "Giving too many runs away with my bowling" and "Conceding runs from poor bowling."

Fielding mistakes (6.84%). Fielding mistakes represents mistakes made during fielding which typically cost the team runs. For example, participants reported that they were "Worried about making a mistake in the field" and "Letting the ball roll past me when I'm wicket keeper."

Other general mistakes (8.55%). This was a general category that included other performance concerns such as "Making a game costing mistake," "Letting the team down by making an error," and "'How I perform during the match." Other Performance Worries

Losing (5.13%). This theme represents concerns regarding the performance outcome. Examples of quotes in this theme included "Getting thrashed in a match," "Losing consecutive matches," and "Concerns about if we are going to lose."

Getting hurt (7.69%). Participants reported injury concerns relating to a range of circumstances. For example, getting hurt could include worries about "Whether I would break my finger if I catch the ball wrong," "Getting hit in the knee (happened twice already)," and "The pace of the bowler and getting hit."

Social concerns (5.98%). Social concerns included "Getting embarrassed," "Getting blamed for something if I make a mistake," and "Someone might insult me if I play bad."

Coping Strategies Emotion-focused Coping Strategies (42.55%)

Emotion-focused coping refers to attempts at managing the self in relation to the stressor (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The following coping strategies were classified as serving an emotion-focused function: Thought control, confidence boosting, emotional control, rationalization, and teammate support. As such, 42.55% of reported coping strategies appeared to serve an emotion-focused function.

Thought control (16.93%). Thought control strategies included positive self-talk responses that lacked a technical component, such as "Think I am going to catch it," "Pretend that nobody is watching," and "Try to think positive thoughts." Thought control differed to technical refocusing because thought control involved maintaining positive thoughts (and therefore regulating oneself, which is emotion-focused coping). Technical refocusing included technical information that represents problem-solving.

Blocking/ignoring (13.71%). This theme reflected blocking and ignoring strategies, such as "Just tried to forget about it" "Talked to people to take my mind off the game" and "Forget about everything else that may have happened."

Confidence boosting (5.45%). Confidence boosting represents instances where children reported that they "Tried to be confident" following a worry. For example, this involved, "Being confident" and "Trying to be confident."

Emotional control (4.84%). Emotional control included attempts to "Relax" and "Stay calm" in order to maintain emotional control after a performance worry.

Rationalization (.81%). Rationalization involved putting mistakes into perspective (e.g., "Tell myself, 'a loss is not the end of the worid'").

Teammate support (.81%). Teammates support included receiving positive comments from other team members.

Problem-Focused Coping Strategies (41.32%)

Problem-focused coping refers to attempts to manage the stressor (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The following coping strategies were classified as predominantly serving a problemfocused function: Focus on technical points, practice, and increase effort. As such, 41.32% of reported coping strategies appeared to serve a problem-focused function.

Focus on technical points (29.22%). The most-frequently cited singular coping response was to using self-talk to (re)focus on technical cues. This was problem-solving self-talk that specifically contained a technical component, such as "Keep the bat straight," "Keep my eye on the ball," "Make my arm brush past my ear," and "Get left arm up to get an accurate ball."

Practice (4.84%). Practice was a strategy used post-performance to deal with mistakes.

This included a resolve to "Practice more" and "I practice" in addition to more specific comments such as "Practice technique and watching the ball."

Use protective equipment (4.84%). The use of protective equipment was related to injury concerns when batting. This theme included decisions to wear the correct equipment, to "Check its size" and "Wear proper underwear [for the protective box/cup]."

Increase effort (2.42%). Increase effort reflected attempts to "Try harder" to be successful during a game (e.g., "Hitting the ball harder").

No Reported Coping Strategies (16.13%)

No coping (16.13%). The absence of coping strategies reflects responses where children were unable to report the use of any coping strategies to deal with a particular performance worry. For example, in response to the worry of 'getting out,' several children responded that they did 'nothing' to deal with this.

Connecting Performance Worries and Coping Responses

In the current study the participants were required to make connections between their performance worries and subsequent coping responses. Examples of the use of coping strategies in response to the three most frequently cited performance worries ('getting out', 30.77%; 'dropping catches' 20.51%; and 'bowling badly' 14.53%) are presented in Figure 2. Each of the main aspects of cricket performance (i.e., batting, fielding, and bowling) are represented by the breakdown of coping strategies. Crosstab analyses revealed a non-significant relationship based on types performance worry and coping strategy [[phi](2, n = 54) = .201, p > .05]. In other words, players used problem-based and emotion-based strategies equally to deal with the three the main performance worries. However, a closer look at the descriptive data shows that when coping function is broken clown by the three major performance worries, (i.e., Figure 2), problem-focused coping was reported more frequently than emotion-focused coping for 'getting out' (54.27% problem-focused versus 34.28% emotion-focused) and 'bowling badly' (64.7% problem-focused versus 29.4% emotion-focused). Only for 'fielding mistakes' was emotion-focused coping (55.55%) reported more than problem-focused coping (33.33%).

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and extent of coping strategies used in response to performance worries among male youth cricket players. Results revealed performance worries that were mostly related to making mistakes (and presumably reflected concerns about subsequent performance failure arising from those mistakes). A range of coping strategies (that reflected both problem- and emotion-focused coping functions) were used in response to the reported performance worries. The data presented here provides descriptive evidence concerning the nature and content of coping in youth sport, and makes important connections between performance worries and subsequent coping. Such descriptive data is a primary requirement for advancing youth coping research (Crocker et al., in press; Lazarus, 1999).

The most frequently cited worry was getting out while batting (30.77%), which is representative of poor performance. Similarly, dropping catches (20.51%), bowling badly (14.53%), fielding mistakes (6.84%), and other general mistakes (8.55%) also reflect concerns about performing poorly. These findings are consistent with previous research showing that physical and mental mistakes and performing up to a child's expected level of ability are stressors in youth sport (e.g., Gould et al., 1991). Indeed, it has been suggested that the most salient sources of worry in sport relate to performance failure and the associated consequences of negative social evaluation (Smith et al., 1998). Given that athletic ability is linked to social status for boys in particular (Chase & Drummer, 1992), it may be important for young males to demonstrate athletic ability, or at least avoid the demonstration of low ability, in front of their peers (Brustad, Babkes, & Smith, 2001). Indeed, as one participant reported in relation to dropping a catch, "the easier the catch the worse it would be afterwards."

Youth sport participants have previously reported fear of injury as a competitive worry (Smith et al., 1990). There is a significant increase in strength for boys at around ages 11 to 13 years due to a rapid growth spurt (Haywood & Getchell, 2001) so children become capable of making the ball travel much faster, but may yet to have developed the skills to manage these increased performance demands. Given that some (but not all) of the children in the present study would have experienced their growth spurt (M age of the participants was 11.9 years), it is likely that there were significant physical differences between the children. The implication here is that injury worries may be related, at least in part, to biological and physical maturation factors.

Previous research indicates that parents are perceived as being stressful when they put too much pressure on their children to perform. For example, Scanlan and Lewthwaite (1984) found that youth wrestlers who reported higher levels of pre-match state anxiety perceived higher levels of parental pressure. Similarly, Weiss, Wiese, and Klint (1989) found that precompetition worries for young male gymnasts included parental concerns. However, in the current study, parents were not cited as performance-related worries. This may be because the children understood the instructions of the concept map to mean that they must only include direct performance concerns. Alternatively, the nature of the game of cricket (i.e., very long games over several hours, specialist knowledge, and low participation rates) may influence perceptions of parental pressure.

In non-sport settings there is evidence that the use of problem-focused coping strategies by children and adolescents are related to positive developmental outcomes and negatively related to emotional, behavioral, and social problems (Ayers et al., 1996; Compas, Malcarne, & Fondacaro, 1988). Alternatively, emotion-focused coping has been related to higher levels of behavioral problems and symptoms of anxiety and depression among children (Compas et al., 1988). However, in the current study there was a balance in the overall reporting of problemversus emotion-focused coping (but emotion-focused coping [42.55%] was reported slightly more than problem-focused coping [41.32%]).

When coping function was broken down by the three major performance worries (Figure 2), problem-focused coping was reported more frequently than emotion-focused coping for 'getting out' and 'bowling badly.' Only for 'fielding mistakes' was emotion-focused coping reported more than problem-focused coping. Although crosstab analyses showed that these findings were statistically non-significant, the descriptive data suggest that different types of stressors resulted in the use of different types of coping strategies. It is possible that these coping differences related to coaching practices. That is, the majority of cricket coaching focuses on batting and bowling, and little technical advice is traditionally offered regarding fielding. It may be that the children possessed more technical knowledge about batting and bowling (as reflected by the reported use of focusing on technical points), and this facilitated their problem-focused coping responses. More research is needed to examine the influence of coaches on the development of a child's coping repertoire in sport.

In terms of looking at coping strategies at the micro-level, several of the reported strategies have been previously reported in the literature. For example, focusing on technical points reflected problem-solving, practice and using protective equipment involves planning, and increasing effort is also a recognized problem-focused micro-level strategy (Crocker et al., 1998). Emotion-focused strategies also reflected previously reported micro-level coping skills. For example, thought control and confidence boosting appear to reflect positive reappraisal, and rationalization is similar to acceptance coping. Blocking/ignoring is a form of avoidance coping. The majority of these coping strategies are included on coping measures such as the Ways of Coping Checklist (Crocker, 1992), sport modifications of the COPE instrument (Crocker & Graham, 1995), the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (Smith, Schutz, Smoll, & Ptacek, 1995), and the CFQ (Kowalski & Crocker, 2001). However, the specific nature and content of children's coping revealed in the current study may be useful for future construct development. For example, problem-solving involved focussing on technical points, which is a sport-specific factor not currently included on coping measures. As Crocker et al. (1998) noted, most of the main instruments used to measure coping in sport were not originally developed with sporting populations. Further inductive qualitative analysis of coping by youth sport participants may reveal other sport specific coping strategies leading to the development of contextually sensitive measurement instruments (cf. Holt & Hogg, 2002).

It is plausible that the no coping category is an artifact of retrospective recall (i.e., an error of omission), rather than a complete absence of coping. The participants were instructed to recall actual events that had occurred in the last two weeks, which should reduce recall error (Ayers et al., 1996). It may be that some of the recalled performance worries did not provoke enough anxiety to require the deployment of coping skills. However, Goyen and Anshel (1998) suggested that boys experienced high levels of anxiety following performance worries such as making a mistake. It is also plausible that some of the participants did not possess, or had yet to develop, an appropriate coping repertoire for some of the worries they experienced. As children mature they may develop a greater repertoire of coping skills (Aldwin, 1994; Compas et al., 1988; Lazarus, 1999).

The researchers and expert coders discussed some conceptual issues regarding classifying coping strategies by their apparent intended function. Lazarus (1999) suggested that a single coping strategy may serve multiple functions. For example, a self-talk statement such as 'keep the arm straight and think positive' may serve two functions. Keeping the arm straight has a technical component that involves problem-solving (i.e., problem-focused coping), whereas thinking positively may reflect emotional control (i.e., emotion-focused coping). Such difficulties in classifying specific coping strategies by the macro-level function they are apparently intended to serve have also been reported in the adult sport psychology literature previously (e.g., Holt & Hogg, 2002).

The present study was limited to providing descriptions of performance worries and associated coping responses. The stress-emotion-coping process is assumed to be a function of interactions between people and their environment (Lazarus, 1999), which is further complicated by developmental considerations among children (Compas et al., 2001). A developmental perspective is required whereby coping strategies among children at different maturational stages are examined (Compas, 1998; Compas et al., 2001). For example, participants in this study did not address the use of more abstract coping strategies such as using tactical concepts to improve game performance. Most of the responses centred around technical components of the game (e.g., self-talk on how to improve batting or bowling skills). This lack of abstract coping strategies may reflect the more complex nature of strategic forms of knowledge associated with tactical understanding (Dodds, Griffin, & Placek, 2001). Thus, future research may wish to examine how age and level of expertise influence the use of more advanced coping strategies.

Authors' Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Sharleen Hoar of York University, Ontario, Canada, and Shwan Fraser of the University of Alberta, Canada, for their assistance with this study.

Figure 2.

Breakdown of coping responses reported in response to three main
performance worries.

Performance Worry Coping Strategies

Getting Out Problem-Focused Coping (54.27%)
 Focus on technical points (45.7%)
 Practice (8.57%)
 Emotion-Focused Coping (34.28%)
 Thought control (17.14%)
 Blocking/ignoring (8.57%)
 Confidence boosting (5.71%)
 Emotional control (2.86%)
 No Reported Coping (11.4%)
Bowling Badly Problem-Focused Coping (64.7%)
 Focus on technical points (58.82)
 Practice (5.88%)
 Emotion-Focused Coping (29.41%)
 Thought control (17.65%)
 Blocking/ignoring (5.88%)
 Rationalization (5.88%)
 No Reported Coping (5.88%)
Fielding Mistakes Emotion-Focused Coping (55.55)
 Thought control (44.44%)
 Blocking/ignoring (11.11%)
 Problem-Focused Coping (33.33%)
 Focus on technical points (22.22%)
 Practice (11.11%)
 No Reported Coping (11.11%)

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Address Correspondence To: Nick Holt, Assistant Professor, Department of Physicals Education & Kinesiology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1 CANADA. E-mail: [email protected]