Performance slumps in sport: Personal resources and perceived stress

Abstract Athletes from a variety of team and individual sports (N = 591) provided background information about themselves and a recent slump in sporting performance they had experienced. The slump-specific information included perceptions of loss, threat, challenge, and stress, as well as dimensional ratings for the primary cause of the slump. A split-sample procedure was used to specify and cross validate multivariate relationships among potential predictor variables and stress ratings. Results indicated that five variables made significant contributions to the prediction of stress ratings: perceived loss, perceived threat, perceived challenge, net causal control, and marital status (R = .77, adjusted R2 = .58). Findings are discussed primarily in terms of Hobfoil's (1988, 1989) conservation of resources model, which emphasizes the role of loss perceptions in the stress process.