Article Review Elements
The review of each article should address the following:
Purpose: Explain why the authors investigated the topic.
Methodology: Describe how the authors conducted their study.
Results: Highlight key findings from the research.
General Discussion: Summarize the authors’ key takeaways.
Additional Commentary
Provide your agreement or disagreement with the authors’ conclusions. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the study.
Length: This assignment must be 1-2 pages for each article (excluding the title and reference page).
References: Include 3 scholarly resources.
Here is a sample of how to write each article review:
Citation:
Gan, Y., Wang, R., Wang, X., Li, J., & Fan, H. (2023). Who benefits more from mindfulness? A
preliminary study exploring moderating effect of personality traits on competition anxiety in athletes. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17479541231159171
Key Notes:
Major take away was that mindfulness does in fact play a role in controlling competition anxiety.
Gender made no difference in the study
Personality traits that were measured did in fact show a difference regarding confidence
Application to my project is clear. I am designing a workshop to help high school basketball players how to be more mindful. This article will give me some good evidence-based practice on why this will be great before games to battle that pregame anxiety.
Research suggests that mindful athletes were more likely to experience a state of energetic concentration and full involvement during sports performance.
Balyan et al. (2022) found that neuroticism in male athletes was positively correlated with somatic anxiety and physiological arousal but negatively correlated with self-confidence, thus believing that neuroticism was an important personality trait conducive to understanding athletes’ precompetition emotional and physiological states.
Craft et al. (2022) stated competition anxiety is representative of this kind of emotion, which is characterized by the cortisol awakening response of individuals when dealing with different degrees of external or internal threats.
Sparks et al. (2022) believed that the various requirements for competitive athletes increase the pressure for successful performance, and pressure increases anxiety, which might affect their performance.
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to look for the effects of mindfulness training on athletes’ competition anxiety and to consider the role of personality traits. This author felt as though if he could examine the effects mindfulness has on personality traits regarding competition anxiety maybe we can teach our athletes how to rid themselves of this anxiety using mindfulness techniques.
Theory
This article was based on cognitive learning theory and emotion regulation and how it can help to control the behavioral effects and physiological arousal that occurs during competition anxiety.
Methods
Fifty athletes were ultimately used as participants. (Mean age = 21.87 years, SD = 1.62). These participants were all recruited from a local sport college. This study utilized a randomized controlled design. Eligible athletes were randomly assigned to the mindfulness/control group according to a computer-generated random number list. Twenty-three participants were in the mindfulness training group. Twenty-seven were in the control group.
Data analysis
The data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS 26.0. Before proceeding to statistical analysis, normality (Shapiro-Wilk test) was checked. The χ-square/T test was used to compare the demographic information of the mindfulness group and the control group or the differences between the groups.
Results
The main results here were the effect of time was found to be significant in “confidence” (F = 4.35, p = .016, η2 = 0.083), and the score of the mindfulness group at T2 and T3 was significantly higher than that at T1 (p < .05)
It must be noted that there was not significant difference between the groups relating to sex of participant.
Discussion
This study found that athletes in the mindfulness group had increased levels of mindfulness and self-confidence and decreased cognitive/somatic state anxiety after mindfulness training; athletes with high activity increased more in mindfulness levels, athletes with high extraversion showed better improvements in cognitive/somatic state anxiety, and athletes with low neuroticism showed greater self-confidence. These findings could help sports workers formulate more personalized psychological interventions based on the characteristics of athletes, optimize training, and improve performance. All and all these results can be the evidence-based practice I need to show the high school athletes I will be working with that mindfulness does in fact have a purpose and the more they master mindfulness the more than can control their emotional reactions to everything ultimately enhancing performance and becoming a better basketball player.
I agree with the authors of this study as I strongly believe mindfulness can make all the difference with anyone dealing with anxiety or stress not just athletes. I think the weakness to this study is that predisposition to meditation or mindfulness training was never discussed. Who is to say that some of the participants in the controlled group had training in this area prior to? A lot of strengths within this study though and to me it makes for a great study.
