Archery games for anxiety: Bagas Pranata 2023 study

The study does not measure anxiety: it describes how nine archery games were put together to lower it during training, aimed at 12 to 14 year olds at a club in Bogor, Indonesia. The games use unusual targets: balloons that must not be burst, plastic cups, pictures, a padlock to open, origami, a numbers game and one with a score limit. An expert in games, an archery expert and a psychologist judged them suitable and usable.

The games were tried out over three sessions, three per session, with 12 young archers, of whom 10 were kept because they fell within the age range. According to the authors the children enjoyed themselves, did not get bored and responded positively to the questionnaires on the trials; the paper, however, reports neither the questions nor the answers.

The work follows the ADDIE model of development research, in five stages: needs analysis, design, prototype development, field trial and evaluation. The trials took place in January 2023. For each game the paper gives only its name: it does not describe rules, distances, equipment or duration, beyond saying that the equipment is the usual training kit and only the targets change. It does not say what scale the experts used to judge the games, nor which questionnaire the children completed.

The very measure the title promises is missing. Training anxiety was not assessed with any instrument, before or after the games, and there is no comparison group training in the usual way. Any effect on anxiety is therefore the authors' conclusion, resting on the children's enjoyment and on the experts' opinion, two experts according to the abstract and three according to the conclusion. Ten children from one club, three sessions and no numerical data do not allow any generalisation. The paper itself presents the work as an undergraduate thesis.

For a youth coach the paper is at most a list of ideas: games with unusual targets, such as balloons, cups or pictures, to vary training and keep attention up. Whether these games reduce anxiety was not measured, and the study does not even say whether they change technique or score. In the registry it counts as the description of a teaching proposal, not as evidence of an effect.