Work-Family Conflict, Perceived Psychological Stress and Psychological Capital as Predictors of the Success and Failure of Sports in Professional Athletes

Psychological characteristics are one of the most important determinants of sports success. Several studies have investigated the role of work-family conflict, perceived psychological stress and psychological capital in predicting the sports success of professional athletes. The study is to investigate the role of work-family conflict, perceived psychological stress and dimension of psychological capital (self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience) in predicting the success and failure of sports in professional athletes. The population included all athletes in different sports fields in Khuzestan Province in 1397 that 240 professional athletes (120 successes and 120 failures) were selected as the sample through purposeful sampling. The participants were asked to answer the work-family questionnaire (Carikci, 2003), Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen and et all, 1983) and Psychological Capital Questionnaires (Luthans and et all, 2007). The Hypothesis of research was conducted using simultaneous discriminate analysis and stepwise method. The study is a correlational one. To analyze the data, both discriminant analysis and descriptive statistics were utilized. The results obtained by Enter discriminant analysis confirmed the hypothesis and revealed that success and failure in sport can be predicted by the variables of the work-family conflict, perceived psychological stress and dimension of psychological capital (self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience) (Predictive coefficient=0/717). The stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that optimism, self-efficacy, hope, work-family conflict and resilience are the proper independent variables for sports success (success and failure) as dependent variable (Predictive coefficient=0/719). Based on the findings, it can be concluded that family position, perceived psychological stress and dimension of psychological capital, plays an important role in sports success of professional athletes. Therefore, it is recommended to sports success and increase psychological capital, Athletes have to learn stress control skills during exercise and the awareness of the families about championship sports must be upgraded.