Female Athletes? Pain Coping Style Based On a Personality Profile

This project investigates the relationship between personality traits and pain coping styles in female athletes. The Big 5 and the Sports Inventory for Pain (SIP) questionnaires were utilized. The Big 5 measures the five broad dimensions of personality: (O)penness to experience, (C)onscientiousness, (E)xtroversion, (A)greeableness and (N)euroticism. The SIP is used to identify an athlete?s capability to cope with pain; the subscales are Direct Coping (COP), Cognitive Coping (COG), Avoidance, Catastrophizing (CAT), and Body Awareness. The profiles from the Big 5 are matched with the results from the SIP to determine if there is a predictive personality type associated with a specific coping style. The subjects were female softball players (n = 30), ages 18-45, who minimum 5 years experience and had sat out of a competition due to injury. An interesting find was that C and N are significantly (p = .000) inversely correlated, r = -.620. Only COG and CAT reached marginal significance at p = .085 and p= .084 respectively. Within CAT the C, A, and N dimensions were significant together at p = .021. Within COG the C, E, and A dimensions were significant together at p = .019. E was the only independently significant dimension at p = .010. Hence for COG being moderately low on conscientiousness, very high on extroversion and very low on agreeableness could predict this coping style. For CAT being very low on conscientiousness, moderately low on agreeableness and very high on neuroticism could predict a tendency for catastrophizing