African Educational Research Journal - Perfectionism and well-being among student athletes - The mediating role of athletic coping

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen

Study investigates how athletic coping mediates the relationship between perfectionism and mental well-being in student athletes. With higher perfectionism, coping becomes more difficult, which can reduce psychological well-being. Using convenient sampling, 292 sports students (119 females, 173 males; 18–35 years) completed multidimensional perfectionism, mental well-being, and athletic coping self-report measures. Results show a significant positive link between well-being and coping skills, and negative links between well-being and other-oriented, socially-prescribed, and self-oriented perfectionism.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Perfectionism in psychology and sport

Coping with difficulty and its role

African Educational Research Journal Vol. 9(2), pp. 489-497, May 2021 DOI: 10. 30918/AERJ.92.21.066 ISSN: 2354-2160 Full Length Research Paper Perfectionism and well-being among student athletes: The mediating role of athletic coping Volkan Ozcan School of Physical Education and Sports, Artvin Coruh University, Turkey. Accepted 6 May, 2021 | ABSTRACT
This study aims at investigating the mediating effect of coping between perfectionism and well-being. In other words, it has been assumed that with the increase in the level of perfectionism, the increase will make it difficult to cope and consequently decrease the mental well-being of individuals, the study examined athletic coping mediated the perfectionism–wellbeing relationship among student athletes. According to recent research that athletic coping may mediate the relationship between perfectionism and well-being. Participants were 292 sports students obtained with the convenient sampling method comprising 119 females and 173 males. Ages ranged from 18-35 years (M = 21.71, SD = 2. 15) . Self-report data were collected including psychometric measures assessing multidimensional perfectionism, mental wellbeing and athletic coping skills. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between mental well-being and coping skills of sportspeople. There were negative significant correlations observed between mental well-being with other-oriented, socially-prescribed and self-oriented perfectionism. The results of this study suggest that athletic coping skills had a partial mediating role between other-oriented perfectionism and the mental well-being of sportspeople.
Keywords: Perfectionism, mental well-being, athletic coping, sport. | | --- | | E-mail: [vozcan@artvin.edu.tr](vozcan@artvin.edu.tr). | INTRODUCTION Though there are many defining features of perfectionism in the psychology literature, in a general sense, theoreticians agree that ‘determination of highperformance standards’ is the main feature of the perfectionism construct (Frost et al. , 1990; Hewitt and Flett, 1991a) . According to Freud (1959), perfectionism isan exaggerated product of the superego determining excessively strict rules to achieve a high degree of success (Taşdemir, 2003) . Perfectionism is defined as striving for flawlessness and is a multidimensional personality tendency with both positive and negative aspects characterized by a person excessively criticizing their behavior and determining high performance standards (Frost et al. , 1990; Flett and Hewitt, 2002; Stoeber, 2018) . Contrary to previous negative and unidimensional definitions of perfectionism, perfectionism began to be discussed as being both negative and positive in the 1970s (Hamachek, 1978) . Perfectionism is a multidimensional trait (Benson, 2003) . Perfectionism is noted for being a factor affecting interpersonal relationships and not just a self-focused assessment process -of one’s own essence- by the individual. Perfectionist people may have high standards for themselves but it is emphasized they may also have high expectations and standards for other people or may perceive high expectations from those around them (Hewitt and Flett, 1991b) . Many individuals identifying themselves as a perfectionist state there is a load on them due to stressful situations linked to being excessively critical and determining high performance (Greenspon, 2000) . Both positive and negative forms of perfectionism have effective roles for sportspeople. Perfectionist sportspeople choose very high, unrealistic targets requiring effort and add to their own internal load (Anshel, 2003) . While sportspeople achieving elite level on a global scale may deal with perfectionism traits in a positive sense; they state that they display high performance due to these traits and that dealing with perfectionism assisted their sporting development (Hardyet al. , 1996) . When research in the sports area is examined,

FAQs

What is the main purpose of the study?

To examine whether athletic coping mediates the relationship between perfectionism and mental well-being among student athletes.

How were participants selected and what was the sample size?

Participants were 292 sports students recruited using convenient sampling, including 119 females and 173 males aged 18–35 years.

What key relationships did the results show?

Mental well-being was positively correlated with coping skills, while mental well-being showed negative correlations with other-oriented, socially-prescribed, and self-oriented perfectionism.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen