Monitoring the mental status of football players

This work has tested heart rate as a parameter to measure anxiety during a penalty shootout. Until now, the most common way to measure the level of anxiety is through questionnaires. The downside is that online monitoring is not possible. Therefore there is a need for physiological parameters to represent the mental state online. Since it has been proven that the level of anxiety is a good predictor of penalty outcome, it is hypothesised that this outcome can be estimated based on the measurement of heart rate and activity. To test this hypothesis an experiment has been conducted with a total of 54 participants (age= 23±4,54 years). They each had to perform three sessions of a penalty shootout, where heart rate and activity were measured. An adapted version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) has been used as the reference for anxiety level. The data have been analysed using both a static and a dynamic approach. These result in parameters that are used to predict the anxiety level and penalty performance of the participant. This prediction has been done with a multinomial logistic regression (MLR) model. The results show that 47,11 % of the participants in the experiment are correctly classified into three classes of anxiety level. Based on a classification into penalty performance 55,11 % of the participants are correctly classified. It can be concluded that heart rate in combination with activity shows promising results as predictor for anxiety.status: publishe