The 12 th ISSP WORLD CONGRESS OF SPORT PSYCHOLOGY Marrakesh - June 17- 21, 2009 MEASURING SELF-EFFICACY IN VOLLEYBALL. PRELIMINARY DATA FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ITALIAN INSTRUMENT Guicciardi M. 1 2 , Biggio S. 2 , Delitala L. 1 , Fadda D. 1 1 University of Cagliari, Department of Psychology, Cagliari, Italy 2 University of Cagliari, Degree Course in Motor Sciences, Cagliari, Italy Introduction Volleyball is a strategic team sport which employs a variety of open skills. Each team consists of six players that play a specific, key role in winning a volleyball match (Setter, Outside Hitter, Middle Hitter, Opposite Hitter and Libero). Unlike other team sports, volleyball calls for the use of a net. It is a non-contact sport in which each team tries to score points against another by forcing the opposing team to make a mistake. Win is achieved by performing basic technical movements with mastery, tactical accuracy, and exerting strong self-control allowing players to maintain high levels of concentration and to control their emotions during the game. The techniques involved in volleyball are divided into basic skills relevant to ball possession (serve, set and attack) and defence (pass, block and dig). Each player has to acquire all of the skills. However each position requires the player to specialise in some of these. In particular, there are positions that require players to specialise in just a few skills (for example the libero is a player specialized only in defensive skills) and other positions that require players to master the majority of them (for example the outside hitter) Mistakes made in any of these basic skills weighs heavily on the team as the opposing team is awarded a point, whereas their correct use gives an advantage to the own team. Points scored or lost during the game are an objective report of an individual player or team’s performance and can be assessed by scouting. These reports consist of a list of different game situations and their statistics. Scouting is important as both players and coaches tend to wrongly evaluate the team’s performance in the different skills. They can’t easily remember individual plays due to the length of the game and the speed of the exchanges. Mastery expectations can influence performance and can constitute an additional tool for the assessment of athletic competence. Self – efficacy is defined as “belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of actions required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997). These beliefs can be categorised in: level, strength, generality. Level concerns the results that the athlete expected to achieve. Strength refers to the certainty of athletes of reaching different levels of performance. Whereas generality concerns the number of areas in which the athlete believes to be effective. This last characteristic is not normally taken into consideration in sport as both athletes and coaches tend to specialise their skills very quickly (Feltz, Short and Sullivan; 2008). Nevertheless, its analysis provides important methodological remarks. As Bandura (1992, 1997) has often pointed out, the level of generality of the measures should be established by the nature of the situation and/or the task predicted (domain specification) (Bandura 1997). It’s possible to establish very precise measures which evaluate perceived efficacy for a certain task played under particular conditions (e.g. managing to achieve a good run up in defence after descending from a block), or rather identify a number of performances relevant to the same play which share common characteristics (e.g. jump serve), as well as general measures concerning perceived efficacy without indicating the conditions under which the play should be carried out (e.g. athletic efficacy). According to Bandura, efficacy scales relevant to just one domain are better at predicting certain behaviours as they reduce the variance of answers attributed to different task and contexts. However, it is not easy to establish the level of generality when one wants to simultaneously compare perceived efficacy linked to high performance and basic abilities; technical skills and self-regulated competencies demonstrated by athletes practising the same discipline. More problems arise when trying to maintain proportion between measures of efficacy expressed by male and female athletes, because - as coaches are well aware of – from one team to the next, equipment or restrictions are not the only elements that vary. Therefore, it is important to start with a detailed contextual analysis of the demands relevant to the task and a conceptual analysis of the abilities relevant to a particular discipline in order to identify noticeable psycho-physical dimensions in an athlete’s performance. Further attention needs to be paid to psychological variables which affect overall performance, such as being able to manage stress, negative emotions, social relationship etc. A scale which also includes these dimensions is more concordant with measures of performance.