Abstract:

It has been reported that athlete self-efficacy, which is one of the important determinants of coping with stress in sports, directly affects efforts to cope with stress and performance. From this point of view, in this study, it was aimed to examine the correlation between athlete self-efficacy and coping with stress in the sample of female handball players. The exploratory correlational method was used in the research. The research group consisted of 205 female handball players, all of whom are Turkish nationals, over the age of 18, playing in the teams in the Turkish Handball Federation Women's Super League and 1st League. Research data were collected with a personal information form, Athlete Self-Efficacy Scale and Coping Style with Stress Scale. Research data were analyzed in SPSS program. Skewness and kurtosis analyzes were used to determine the normal distribution of the data. T-test and One Way Anova test were used for comparisons between groups. Pearson Correlation test was used in the analysis of the relationship between dependent variables. As a result of the research, it was determined that the level of coping with stress increased as the athlete's self-efficacy level of female handball players increased. In addition, it has been determined that the level of self-efficacy and coping with stress is higher in national handball players who are 27 years old and over, have a bachelor's degree, play in the super league, have a athletic career period of more than 10 years. Considering the results of the research, it can be said that increasing the athlete's self-efficacy levels can also increase the levels of coping with stress, especially among female handball players who are young, have a low level of education, play in the lower leagues and have little athletic experience. For this reason, it is recommended to increase the athlete's self-efficacy levels of female handball players.