Personnel Selection In Athletic Programs Essays - Applied Psychology

Personnel Selection In Athletic Programs Personnel Selection in Athletic Programs ABSTRACT Whether it be at a collegiate or professional level, organizations have been faced with public pressure to be successful. The selection of appropriate personnel is one means for doing this. Although coaches are experts in identifying the physical characteristics needed for success in their field; they lack the skills necessary to asses the psychological factors that have been proven to have a significant impact on athletic performance. The identification, quantification and implementation of these psychological attributes in selection decisions can therefore have a significant impact on a program's success. This paper reviews the factors that have been associated with athletic success, measures of these factors, and use of these factors in making selection decisions. Introduction Over the course of the past twenty years an increasing amount of attention has been devoted to the field of athletics. Whether it be at a collegiate or professional level, organizations have been faced with public pressure to be successful. As a result, athletic directors and general managers have been faced with the question of how to improve their teams' success. One obvious way of doing this is to select qualified personnel for the tasks at hand. The method by which athletes are selected for a team can have a significant impact on that team's success. In the past, decisions have been made based largely on judgments of an individual's physical characteristics with little attention given to the psychological factors that contribute to athletic success. Coaches are experts in identifying the physical characteristics needed for success in their field; however, they lack the skills necessary to asses the psychological factors that have been proven to have a significant impact on athletic performance. Coaches have relied on informal judgments of constructs such as an athlete's motivation and level of aggression to determine their potential to succeed. Everyone has heard stories of athletes that were told they lacked the physical skill to perform but due to the psychological resources of drive and determination, these individuals have overcome their physical limitations and gone on to be highly productive individuals. The identification, quantification and implementation of these psychological attributes in selection decisions can therefore have a significant impact on a program's success. This paper will review the factors that have been associated with athletic success, measures of these factors, and use of these factors in making selection decisions. For the most part, athletes can be characterized as being psychologically sound, effectively functioning people. However, some studies have shown that athletes have a tendency to be less anxious, more independent and aggressive, more extroverted, and more achievement oriented then the population in general (Peterson, Weber & Trousdale, 1967). A large proportion of the research that has been conducted in the field of sport psychology has been descriptive and is therefore well suited for the identification of the psychological skills necessary for success. Descriptive information involves comparisons of highly skilled athletes with lesser-skilled athletes for the purpose of identifying differences. This information is useful in the hypothesis generation phase of selection programs. By identifying the presence of certain characteristics that are uniquely associated with the success of certain groups, we are able to identify those factors that are most likely to be correlated with the success of future athletes. In many ways this descriptive research can be thought of as a job analysis. That is to say, the knowledge, skills, and activities that are important to the job of an athlete are identified in this way. Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Related to Success Morris (1975) attempted to identify factors that were associated with selection for the Canadian National Field Hockey team by combining a psychological approach with biographical data. The instruments used were the Athletic Motivation Inventory (AMI) and a biographical questionnaire which was constructed specifically for this study. The AMI is self administered and consists of 190 questions written with a sports frame of reference such that the respondent is asked what actions they would take or how they would feel about situations that occur in the field of sports. It purports to measure the following constructs: drive, self-confidence, aggressiveness, coachability, emotional control, conscience development, trust, responsibility, leadership and mental toughness. Validity scales are included that are used to determine faking or a pattern of random answering. Results indicated that athletes selected to the team showed a significantly higher level of aggression, were more desiring and had a greater capacity for leadership, and