A Survey of Athlete's Stressors in Selected Iranian National Teams

The purpose of the present study was to survey the athlete's stressors among selected teams of Iranian national teams.
The research population was selected from Iranian national teams in the team sports of basketball, volleyball, football, futsal and handball (N=85). The sample size was considered equal to the research population. Finally, 71 athletes participated in the survey (83%). The structured questionnaire of athlete's stressors was designed using the research literature and twelve subscales were recognized based on exploratory factor analysis. For analysis of data, Repeated Measures ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc test, and one-way ANOVA with Tukey post hoc test at the significance of p≤ 0.05 were used. According to factor analysis, 65 items with factor loadings of 30% were classified into twelve factors.
The results indicated that the factors of injury, physical condition, individual and social issues, conflict with coach, team atmosphere, victory and winning, monotony and lack of spirit, time pressure, ambiguity and uncertainty, development expectation, training and media pressure, stress in the match field had more effect on athletes’ stress, respectively.
In sum, the prior factors of injury, physical condition, individual and social issues show that the management of sport competitions and exercise, prevention and treatment of injuries, and communication and interpersonal skills of athletes need more attention.