Comparison of State and Trait Anxiety Levels of Handicapped and Non-Handicapped Tennis Sportsmen

The aim of this study is to compare state and trait anxiety levels of handicapped sportsmen with wheel chairs that have lately become widespread in our country and non-handicapped tennis sportsmen. Total 22 handicapped sportsmen, 13 male and 9 female, who participated in 2011-2012 season Wheel Chair Turkey Tennis Championship and 22 non-handicapped sportsmen, 13 male and 9 female, took part in the study. State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) has been used in the study. If data show normal distribution or not was analysed with Kolmogorov-smirnov test and as a result of this test, group t test was used independently from parametric tests for binary cluster comparisons since the data show normal distribution. Significance level was taken as 0.05 in the study. According to findings obtained from the study; state and trait anxiety levels of handicapped sportsmen was seen to be higher, compared to state and trait anxiety levels of non-handicapped sportsmen (P 0,05). Consequently, along with the fact that state and trait anxiety levels of handicapped sportsmen is seen to be higher compared to state and trait anxiety levels of non-handicapped sportsmen, their thoughts on being successful or unsuccessful in results of competitions they involve in and thusly their motivations they have during optimal level of arousal are seen to be effective on getting close to an ideal anxiety level in order to be successful. Low anxiety levels of non-handicapped tennis sportsmen, on the other hand, can be ascribed to the fact that survey study was conducted on the day of the match in training environment.