Vol 59 (1), Mar 2015

 

It is generally accepted that a competitive mindset is essential to successfully compete in collegiate sports. Unlike sports, where both mental and physical skills are required, agricultural students compete in judging contests, solely on mental skills. Therefore, quantifying the mindset of judging competitors, and determining the efficacy of psychological inventories may prove useful in identifying and developing student judging performance. Following informed consent, multidimensional psychometric inventories were completed by 265 collegiate judging participants (161 males, 104 females) from 13 universities. Coaches ranked team participants by judging proficiency/skill level (high, moderate, low). Data were analyzed by skill level, gender and judging event. MANOVA indicates significant main effects across skill level (P = 0.007) and judging event (P = 0.003), but not gender (P = 0.19). Highly-ranked competitors exhibit significantly less tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion, and significantly greater skills in controlling anxiety and maintaining concentration, confidence, and motivation than lower-ranked competitors. Top performers are more power-oriented, more repressive-focused and internalistic than lower-ranked peers. Discriminant function analysis revealed 88% of judging competitors were correctly classified by skill level using psychological variables. In conclusion, psychometric inventories can assist judging coaches in identifying a student’s capacity and potential development to successfully compete in a judging environment.