An Examination Of The Relationship Between Mental Resilience and Sporting Self-Confidence Among Athletes in Different Disciplines

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between mental resilience and athletic self-confidence in athletes from different sports. The research was conducted using a correlational survey model. The population consisted of 4,314 licensed athletes in siirt province participating in athletics, volleyball, basketball, and judo, while the sample consisted of 306 volunteer athletes, 176 of whom were male (57.5%) and 130 of whom were female (42.5%). Data were collected using the seydaoğulları (2018) mental toughness ınventory in sports and the vealey (1986) sport self-confidence ınventory (adapted by engür et al., 2006). Analyses were performed in spss 27.0 using the following methods: post-normality independent samples t-test, one-way anova, tukey post-hoc, and pearson correlation. According to the research findings, a low-level, statistically significant positive relationship was found between mental resilience and athletic self-confidence. No significant differences were found in mental resilience and self-confidence levels based on gender and age variables. While no significant differences were found in self-confidence levels based on sport variable, significant differences were determined in mental resilience levels. Post-hoc analysis results showed that volleyball players had higher mental resilience scores than judo players. No significant differences were found in self-confidence levels based on the variable of years of sports participation, while mental resilience levels were found to increase significantly with increasing sports experience. In particular, it was determined that the mental resilience scores of individuals who had been participating in sports for 10 years or more were higher than those who had been participating in sports for 1–3 years. A significant and positive relationship was found between mental resilience and athletic self-confidence. It was determined that mental resilience is particularly influenced by the variables of sport discipline and sporting experience, while confidence levels did not differ significantly according to demographic variables. In this regard, it is considered important to systematically incorporate mental skills training alongside physical training in the performance development process of athletes.