Proactive coping, psychological skills, self-talk, coping self-efficacy, and performance in collegiate baseball and softball athletes

The current study included three research aims: (1) assess the hypothesis that athlete's reported self-talk would be positively correlated with reported coping self-efficacy, (2) explore the relationship between the Proactive Coping Inventory (PCI) and the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28), and (3) assess the predictive ability of proactive coping, athletic coping skills, self-talk, and coping self-efficacy on the performance statistics of batting average (BA), fielding percentage (FLD%), and earned run average (ERA). Forty-eight collegiate baseball and softball players completed the Self-Talk Questionnaire (ST-Q), Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSE), the PCI and the ACSI-28 while performance statistics were retrieved from their university. The hypothesis that reported self-talk shared a positive correlation with reported levels of coping self-efficacy was not supported although athletic coping skills predicted coping self-efficacy. The exploratory analysis between the PCI and the ACSI-28 yielded numerous significant correlations between subscales. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to assess the relationships further and resulted in the derivation of four factors (Focus, Motivation, Preventive Preparation, and Avoiding Negative Thoughts) while accounting for 70.47 percent of variance. In predicting performance, only proactive coping significantly predicted FLD%, beta = .47, p = .031 and marginally predicted BA, beta = .35, p = .069 during hierarchical linear regression analyses while controlling for gender/sport. Thus, with the PCI's significant associations with the ACSI-28 and its initial ability to predict some aspects of performance, the current study asserts that further investigation and integration of proactive coping in sport psychology literature is needed.