Time phases and the individual psychological crisis in sports competition: Theory and research findings

A conceptual model of the development of an athlete's individual psychological crisis during competition has recently been proposed and applied to basketball. In this article the diagnostic value of the time dimension with regard to such a process of crisis development is investigated. The relevance of six time phases for the diagnosis of individual psychological crisis during the competition is discussed in detail. The present study was conducted on 28 basketball experts who completed a 'phases of competition' questionnaire using the components of the Bayesian likelihood ratio (diagnostic value) for each phase. Results revealed that time limits can be determined unanimously and that the proposed phases do have a considerable diagnostic relevance as predicted on theoretical grounds. Various aspects related to the validation and the practical applicability of the present research are briefly discussed.