The effectiveness of life skills training on emotion regulation strategies and sports self-efficacy of children / adolescent athletes

The aim of this study was the effectiveness of life skills training on emotion regulation strategies and sports self-efficacy of children / adolescent athletes. The research method was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population of this study consisted of all student-athletes in Rasht in the academic year 2009-2010, from which 30 people were selected by available sampling and randomly replaced in two experimental groups (15 people) and control (15 people). They answered the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnowski et al.2005) and the Sports Self-Efficacy Scale (Kerel et al. 2007). The participants in the experimental group received 8 sessions of life skills program. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance. The results showed that life skills training had an effect on emotion regulation strategies and sports self-efficacy of students in disadvantaged areas. They had more and less maladaptive emotion regulation. It seems that the use of life skills training increases athletic self-efficacy and adaptive emotion regulation, as well as decreases maladaptive emotion regulation in athlete students.