Perfectionism, anxiety in sport, and sport achievement in adolescence.

The goal of this study was to consider the distinctive differences in certain dimensions of perfectionism between athletic and non-athletic adolescents, and also to establish a correlation of perfectionism, variables of anxiety and sport achievement in junior athletes. Our sample encompassed high-school students from Valjevo, Serbia (N=120) and junior athletes (N=126), with a mean age of 17,2 years. They were subjected to a battery of tests, comprised by the Positive and Negative Perfectionism Scale (PANPS), Questionnaire regarding sport achievement (UUS), Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI-2) and the Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT). Instruments that were used for measuring had a satisfying metric characteristic (reliability), which points to the fact that they can be used in our population as well. By using the Student t-test, it was shown that athletes manifested the construct of adaptive perfectionism in greater number compared to non-athletes (p < .01). By conducting the test of Variance Analysis (ANOVA), it was established that maladaptive perfectionist athletes had more pronounced sport anxiety (as a state) from clusters of adaptive perfectionists and non-perfectionists. Calculated Pearson’s correlation coefficients showed that the values of variables of maladaptive perfectionism have statistically significant positive correlation with sport anxiety (as a state, and as a dimension of personality), and also with adaptive perfectionism and self-confidence, whereas the variable of sport anxiety (as a dimension of personality) shows a substantially negative interaction with sport achievement (p < .01). As a conclusion, the hypothetical model proposed in this article and its implications for further verification were analyzed in the context of existing empiric and theoretical grounds.