For many years, sport psychology researchers have debated about which mental skills are relevant to athlete performance. Over the years, this debate has led to an assortment of different methods and measurement of athlete mental skills and competencies. Because of this, there is confusion about the utility of these measures and their validity when examining athlete mental skills. Durant-Bush et al. (2022) recently examined the literature in sport psychology and postulated that there are several psychological skills/competencies that are vital to consistently achieving high levels of performance in sport. These skills/competencies can be grouped under 3 general areas: Fundamental (motivation, resilience, and self-confidence), Self-regulation (self-awareness, emotion, attention control, arousal regulation and stress management), and Interpersonal (relationship management, leadership, communication, and teamwork). Thus, the need for new measurements that focus on these broad-based mental skills/competencies is crucial for continued research and future application with athletes and sports teams.
Conceptualization of HeadSet’s Mental Skills Survey for Athletes (MSSA)
MSSA is a 99 item self-report instrument that measures five separate athlete mental skills. The mental skills include Self-Awareness, Regulation, Self-Confidence, Resilience, and Motivation. The MSSA was initially conceptualized based on the foundational work of Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda’s Cognitive Affective Processing System (CAPS) model (1995), and then continued through an extensive sport psychology literature review to understand which mental skills are important to athlete performance. CAPS is a framework which explains consistency and variability in behavior across different situations. The CAPS model focuses on cognitive processes, emotions, and motivational factors that influence the dynamics of the situation and in turn influences the way a person responds to the situation. There are five interacting domains of the CAPS model which include encoding strategies, affective responses, expectations and beliefs, competencies, self-regulatory strategies, and goals and values.
Sport psychologist Ronald Smith (2006) illustrated the utility of the CAPS model for construct elaboration, assessment of individual differences, and interventions in sport psychology. In various sport scenarios, athletes will look at their surroundings and sort the information into categories to better organize the information. The athletes also hold beliefs and expect certain outcomes from the situation. For example, before facing a pitcher in baseball, a batter will typically encode information regarding the pitcher they are facing (and the environment around the pitcher) and will have beliefs and expectancies about that pitcher. The batter will generate outcomes and affect based on the beliefs and this will impact their future sport behavior. As demonstrated, there are many variables that are intertwined into this model which makes it comprehensive, yet descriptive of how performance and mental skills are linked.
Mental Skills Survey Structure & Application
Definitions have been provided for the five separate mental skills (Self-Awareness, Regulation, Self-Confidence, Resilience, and Motivation) as shown below. There are also four moderator variables that are included on the MSSA: Competition Planning, Self-Talk, Distractibility, and Social Support
- Self-Awareness: assesses whether an athlete demonstrates awareness of their strengths and development areas, as well as having insight in order to understand the link between mind and body in response to changes that occur in the athlete’s environment.
- Regulation: assesses how the athlete is able to alter and control emotions and behavior in order to succeed at a specific task to maximize performance.
- Self-Efficacy: measures how much belief an athlete has in his or her ability, as well as the required effort needed to successfully deal with current and future challenges.
- Resilience: measures the ability to effectively cope, adjust, and recover from adversity in order to enhance performance excellence.
- Motivation: assesses the intrinsic need to strive for competence, enjoyment and well-being. Motivated athletes are prepared to make the appropriate sacrifices to achieve excellence.
Initial validation of the MSSA was conducted with 486 athletes from various sports and ranged in age from 16 to 64 years. Participants were predominantly selected from baseball, hockey, basketball, volleyball, soccer, as well as marathon and ½ marathon runners (Papadogiannis, 2021). Athletes record their responses on a 5-point Likert scale. Answers range from (1) “never or not true of me” and (5) “always true of me”. The majority of MSSA items are positively written (e.g., “I use positive statements that encourage me during competition” or “I am aware of the way I feel when competing”). There are also negatively phrased items that need to be reverse scored (e.g., “I tend to worry when things are going well” or “I need to learn how to control my emotions”).
Using HeadSet’s MSSA, Marcinkiewicz (2014) explored whether past participation in sport had an impact on an individual’s level of self-efficacy. The study examined 133 student athletes and focused on the age they began participating in competitive sports, their level of competition, the length of time they participated in a competitive sport activity, and the age of cessation of participation. The results showed that individuals who participated in sport for a longer period had significantly higher levels of the Self-Efficacy scale than those who did not. Also, individuals who stopped participating at an earlier age had lower levels of self-efficacy than those who continued with the participation in sports. The 5 scales of the MSSA showed strong levels of internal consistency with Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from .71 (Awareness) to .82 (for both Regulation and Self-Efficacy).
Treleaven (2016) researched the influence mental skills on sport performance with competitive level trampolinists (ranging in age from 18 to 25). Participants were asked to complete the MSSA before a mock competition that was scored by a judge. After the mock competition, participants were separated into two groups (i.e., high scores on the mock competition and low scores on the mock competition). Results showed that higher scoring athletes in the competition had significantly higher scores on the mental skills of Resilience, Awareness, Self-Efficacy, and Motivation (than athletes who scored lower on the mock competition). No significant effects were found for the scale of Regulation. Cronbach alpha coefficients for all five scales of the MSSA were considered acceptable. The internal consistency coefficients for all 5 MSSA scales were Regulation (.85), Self-Efficacy (.84), Resilience (.80), Motivation (.75) and Awareness (.70).
Perez (2020) examined the relationship between the five mental skills and burnout in eSport athletes. Results showed that higher scores in Awareness and Regulation were significant indicators of lower levels of burnout. The study also showed that higher scores in Self-Efficacy, Resilience, and Motivation were related to lower scores on burnout, but they did not reach levels of significance. Lastly, an additional significant finding was noted within the relationship between awareness and time spent practicing. E-sport athletes who spent more time practicing (i.e., through the number of hours spent per week) had significantly higher levels of awareness than those who practiced less often.
Viinamae (2014) investigated the effects of mindfulness-based training interventions (i.e., breathing/centering, regulation, self-talk, visualization/imagery exercises) on the mental skills of rhythmic gymnasts. The rhythmic gymnasts underwent a mental skills training program for 5 weeks. The first week focused on the concept of awareness and how it can be achieved through mental and physical practice. The following weeks’ interventions included breathing/centering, emotional regulation, self-talk, and visualization/imagery. Participants’ mental skills were measured before and after the interventions were given. Results showed that the MSSA scale of Awareness significantly improved after completing the program. Improvements were also made on scales of Regulation, Resilience, Motivation, and Self-Efficacy, but the results were not significant.
A 20-item short version of the MSSA has been used in conjunction with the HeadSet mental training application (www.headsetsports.com). The mental training application assesses athletes monthly and then prescribes specific mental workouts (aka Mental WOWs) to increase mental strength. 276 athletes from 11 different teams from 3 sports (i.e., hockey, soccer, and rugby) were examined to investigate the impact an online mental training program has on the MSSA’s overall scores. The findings showed that MSSA scores increased from assessment 1 to assessment 4 and peaked at assessment 5 (i.e., approximately 5 months after initial registration on the application). After the 5th month, the MSSA scores began to taper off (Papadogiannis, 2021).
Situational Judgement Test in Sport
For far too long, sport psychology researchers have relied solely on self-report measures or reviewers’ observations to assess athlete mental skill. Reliance on self-reports and rater observations raises concern over the validity of responses because of distortions and biases (i.e., athletes and reviewers are not always the most accurate assessors). Also, the items within many self-report measures often lack situational information. It is expected that mental skills will differ across situations and should be measured with sport specific contexts in mind. Thus, current self-report athlete mental skills measures are missing key situational information and potentially misrepresenting the constructs. A situational judgement test (SJT) quantifies an individual’s situational decision making by posing a scenario and asking them to identify a fitting response (Libbrecht & Lievens, 2012). Some SJTs have also incorporated game-like and multimedia assessments allowing examinees to experience the verbal and non-verbal aspects of a situation and because of this has been perceived more favorably by examinees (Weekley et al., 2015).
HeadSet is in the process of scale evaluation for a new mental performance test that is designed to continue the support of athlete mental skill measurement. Using the MSSA framework, HeadSet's Situational Judgement Test in Sport (SJTS) measures athlete cognition, behavior, and attitude with realistic, hypothetical sport-relevant situations. The test presents athletes with challenging situations that they experience before, during, and after they compete. For each situation, several possible actions are presented, and athletes must identify on a 5-point scale how effective or ineffective each action is toward their future performance.
SJTS allows for more consistent and valid/honest responses because of its structure. Research has found that faking has less impact on SJTs than self-report inventories (such as personality inventories). The SJT format makes correct answers appear less apparent to examinees and is thus less susceptible to distortion when compared with Likert measures. This contextual nature of the SJT also allows for better differentiation between similar traits (Teng et al., 2020). In addition, SJTs demonstrate substantial incremental validity over cognitive ability measure (3-5%) and (6-7%) over personality measures (Patterson et al., 2012).
50 SJTS items have been developed and initial observations with athletes from various sports including hockey, basketball, soccer, combat sports, running/cycling, and badminton have been gathered. Item observational data has also been collected with 13 sport and performance psychology consultants (6 female and 7 male). The next step in the development of the SJTS is to continue to collect data with the athletes and the expert panel in order to create a scoring key for each item. This will allow for the process of identifying the number of scale(s) for the test to begin formal data collection. Here is an example of an SJTS item:
During your competition/game you are feeling fatigued. Your decrease in energy is impacting your ability to focus. Please rate the effectiveness of each action below using a 5-point scale: 1 = very ineffective, 2 = ineffective, 3 = somewhat effective, 4 = effective, and 5 = very effective.
- You use specific words to help you believe that you will get through the fatigue.
- Expect that the feeling of fatigue will not get better, and you just accept it.
- Tell yourself that everything happens for a reason. Distractions are just part of the game. You will use your refocusing routine to get back to the task at hand.
- Don’t pay attention to the fatigue. Keep your mind focused on the outcome of the competition/game.
- You decide to stop competing and you ask for a break to bring your energy level back up.
Conclusion
HeadSet’s Mental Skills Survey for Athletes (MSSA) measures key mental skills that have been found (Durant-Bush et al., 2022) to influence consistent athlete performance. Research with the instrument has shown that it has adequate internal consistency, as well as content and construct validity. Future research with the instrument needs to examine test-retest reliability, as much of the research with the MSSA has only been snapshots of time. It is also necessary to continue to examine the instrument’s construct validity (convergent and incremental validity) with other mental skill self-report measures. As well, leveraging the situational judgement test in sport paradigm holds promise to provide another lens into this area of assessment.
References
Durand-Bush, N., Baker, J., van den Berg, F., Richard, V. and Bloom, G. (2022). The gold medal profile for sport psychology (GMP-SP), Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2022.2055224
Libbrecht. N., and Lievens, F. (2012) Validity evidence for the situational judgment test paradigm in emotional intelligence measurement. International Journal of Psychology, 47:6, 438-447, DOI: 10.1080/00207594.2012.682063
Marcinkiewicz, A. (2014). The association between participation in competitive sports and self-efficacy (Unpublished undergraduate thesis). University of Guelph-Humber.
Mischel, W., and Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102, 246–268.
Papadogiannis, P. K. (2021). Mental Skills Survey for Athletes (MSSA): Technical Manual. Toronto, Canada: Sport Minded Technologies, Inc.
Patterson, F., Ashworth, V., Zibarras, L., Coan, P., Kerrin, M. and O’Neill, P. (2012), Evaluations of situational judgement tests to assess non-academic attributes in selection. Medical Education, 46: 850-868. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2012.04336.x
Perez, M. (2020). The impact of mental skills on eSport athlete burnout (Unpublished undergraduate thesis). University of Guelph-Humber
Smith, R.E. (2006) Understanding sport behavior: A cognitive-affective processing systems approach. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 18: 1–27 https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200500471293
Teng, Y., Brannick, M.T., and Borman, W.C. (2020) Capturing resilience in context: Development and validation of a situational judgment test of resilience. Human Performance, 33:2-3, 74-103, DOI: 10.1080/08959285.2019.1709069
Treleaven, D. (2016). Self-regulation and awareness in sport performance: Based on electroencephalographic and self-report measures (Unpublished undergraduate thesis). University of Guelph-Humber.
Viinamae, V. (2014). The impact of mental skills training on the development of rhythmic gymnast’s awareness. (Unpublished undergraduate thesis). University of Guelph-Humber.
Weekley, J. A., Hawkes, B., Guenole, N., & Ployhart, R. E. (2015), Low-fidelity simulations. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2, 295–322. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032414-111304