The Relationship Between Trait Anxiety, Perfectionism, and Burnout in Collegiate Basketball Players

Burnout has been a debilitative and non-discriminative problem among athletes for years, yet the warning signs that lead to experiencing burnout remain variant and vague. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible relationship and role of prediction that existed between trait anxiety, perfectionism, and symptoms of burnout in collegiate basketball players. The role gender, age, and position played as predictors of burnout symptoms were also investigated. Three inventories were utilized to assess the 76 collegiate participants (41 men, 35 women): the Eades Athletic Burnout Inventory (EABI; Eades, 1990), the Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT; Martens, Gill, Scanlan, & Simon, 1990), and the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001). Participants were from three universities in the southeastern region of the United States, and all had previous competition experience at the very minimum of four years. Results indicated that a relationship existed between trait anxiety, perfectionism, and symptoms of burnout. Significant variance was explained for the burnout subscales of negative self-perception of athletic ability (R2 = .297, S.E. = 8.57), psychological withdrawal from and devaluation of sport participation (R2 = .286, S.E. = 6.96), congruence between the athletes\u27 and coaches\u27 expectations for and evaluations ofthe athletes\u27 performance (R2 = .267, S.E. = 4.38), and personal and athletic accomplishment (R2 = .253, S.E. = 3.92). The perfectionism high standard subscale provided significant contributions to all six bumout subscales. The regressions also revealed trait anxiety to be significant in the prediction ofthe depersonalization by coach and teammates subscale Moreover, position played established predictive value within several bumout dimensions. Overall, predictors for each subscale were significant and meaningful. Pearson correlations revealed several gender differences. Negative self-perception of athletic ability and psychological withdrawal from and devaluation of sport participation produced the greatest difference. A strong, positive relationship for female players (r = .727, r2 = .529; p\u3c .01) emerged, which was the only strong correlation, where male players experienced a weak, positive relationship (r = .421, r2 = .177; p\u3c .01). However, using Fisher\u27s z confirmed that these correlational differences were not significant