Towards understanding the coping strategy among student-athletes

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the coping strategies of student-athletes at different level of participation at university level. A sample of 307 (female-213; male-94) university students-athletes in one of the public university in Malaysia were randomly selected for this study. The age of the student-athletes (M=22.09, sd=1.35 Out of the number, 210 represented college dormitory, 51 represented university at National level, and 46 represented state at national level, and representing Nation at International level. The Athletic Coping Skills Inventory – 28 was used to measure the psychological coping skills for athletes. The instrument consisted of a 28-item scale measuring seven classes of sport-specific psychological coping skills including freedom from worry, coping with adversity, goal setting, coachability, concentration, peaking under pressure, confidence, and goal setting. Result shows that all of the seven coping strategies were significantly different with the four level of participations. However, the freedom from worry and coachability among college representative seem to be very low and needed distinct attention from the coaches. Results were further discussed and recommendations for future research also suggested in this paper.