The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a psychometric instrument called the Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool (OMSAT), which attempted to determine the relative importance of mental skills required to achieve levels of excellence in sport performance. A review of the literature of sport psychology experts Anshel, (1987); Mahoney, (1989); Mahoney, Gabriel & Perkins, (1987); Orlick (1980, 1986, 1992); Seiler, (1992) and Vealey, (1988) was completed and served as the basis for the creation of the OMSAT questionnaire. The questionnaire was initially comprised of 14 scales including a total of 113 questions. The 14 scales were further divided into five major areas: (1) Foundation Skills (commitment, belief); (2) Affective Skills (stress reactions, fear, relaxing, energizing); (3) Cognitive Skills (goal-setting, imagery, mental practice, focus, refocus); (4) Competition Skills (simulation, competition planning); and (5) Team dynamics. The OMSAT questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 486 subjects who were divided into three groups based on their gender, sport discipline and athletic level of achievement. Following statistical analyses (i.e., internal consistency, frequency item distribution) of every question, a new condensed version of the OMSAT was formulated. This new version was comprised of 71 questions within 12 scales. Results of the condensed version of the OMSAT demonstrated high levels of internal consistency (alpha levels above.78), and acceptable levels of test-retest reliability (r levels above.63). Mean score differences indicated that elite athletes scored higher than competitive athletes, who in turn, scored higher than recreational athletes in nearly all of the OMSAT scales. Overall, the OMSAT appears to provide a potentially useful assessment and diagnostic tool for both understanding, and potentially, counselling athletes of different ability levels.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/6668 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Bota, Jordache Dumitru. |
| Contributors | Salmela, John, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 107 p. |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds