INVESTIGATION OF STRESS MANAGEMENT STYLES OF PROFESSIONAL VOLLEYBALL PLAYERS

Depending on the stress the organism encounters, reactions of people may vary. Stress leads to positive and negative effects on the person. The person starts to act and struggle against the stress they face. The aim of this research is to reveal the ways professional volleyball players cope with the pre-match stress. The universe of the research is volleyball players in Turkey's 3rd league, and the sample of it consist of randomly selected 100 (69 female, 31 male) athletes who played in the 3rd league during the 2016-2017 season. The scale was applied to the athletes 30 minutes before the match. The research has employed a 30-item Stress Coping Strategies (Styles) Scale developed by Folkman and Lazarus (1980) and adapted to Turkish by Sahin and Durak (1995). Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be 77. Independent Samples T-test and one-way analysis of variance (One Way ANOVA) for cases with more than two groups test were used in the analysis of the obtained data. Values in the self-confident approach of lower dimensions are above the average. By contrast, a statistically significant difference was not reached in the research with regard to gender and age. It can be said that the athletes were not very stressed before the match and accordingly they did not set a strategy to cope with the stress. This condition may be related to the importance of the match or the league it is played in. In other studies conducted, it is suggested to increase the number of samples and to apply the scale to the upper leagues in order to clarify the styles of coping with stress more clearly. Article visualizations