Mental toughness and archery accuracy: Cahyo 2025

Two hundred and sixty-nine archers filled in a mental toughness questionnaire, the SMTQ, before competing at official events in Central Java and Yogyakarta between November 2024 and February 2025, and their competition scores were taken from the official results: 147 archers in the 40 metre event, 64 in the 50 metre and 58 in the 70 metre.

The mean questionnaire score comes out slightly higher at 40 metres, 37.56 with a standard deviation of 1.28, against 36.92 at 50 and 36.57 at 70. Analysis of variance finds a difference between the three groups (F 9.55 on 2 and 266 degrees of freedom) and Duncan's test separates the 40 metre group from the other two, which stay together. Mean competition scores are 291.70 at 40 metres, 325.92 at 50 and 310.71 at 70.

The authors conclude that mental toughness influences accuracy. The test this conclusion rests on is a paired t-test between the questionnaire score and the competition score: mean differences of minus 254.1 at 40 metres, minus 267.0 at 50 and minus 274.1 at 70, with p below 0.001. Those figures are no more than the distance between two different scales, a questionnaire whose observed values lie between 32 and 40 and a competition total of around 300. The test says the two quantities are not equal, not that they are related, and an association between mental toughness and score is never computed anywhere in the paper.

An observational cross-sectional design. The authors looked for archery competitions in the two Indonesian provinces between November 2024 and February 2025, obtained permission from organisers and coaches, and handed out the questionnaire before the start, collecting it once the event was over. Eligible archers were those entered in the 40, 50 and 70 metre events who agreed to complete the questionnaire and to have their official score used; excluded were incomplete questionnaires, unavailable scores, and anyone who had competed in several events without a matchable identity. Each athlete was given a code built from name, date of birth, club and licence number, and for anyone competing more than once only the first observation was kept. The final sample is 269 athletes from a census of all those eligible at the events observed.

The instrument is the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire of Sheard and colleagues, with three facets, confidence, constancy and control, on a four point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Accuracy is the official competition score, with no further specification. The analysis, in SPSS 26, is a t-test, then a one-way analysis of variance across the three distance groups, with Duncan's test as the follow-up comparison.

The link between mental toughness and accuracy, which is the title of the study, is never measured: there are no correlations, no regressions, and no comparisons between archers with high and low questionnaire scores. What there is is a paired t-test between two variables on different scales, which cannot produce anything but a significant result and says nothing about association. The conclusion that tougher archers are more accurate has, in the published data, no test behind it.

The method section announces a main analysis adjusting for age, years of training and highest level of competition: no such analysis appears in the results. The three distance groups are also not comparable on score: the mean totals, 291.70 at 40 metres and 325.92 at 50, run opposite to what one would expect, and the competition format, the number of arrows and the size of the target faces are nowhere stated, so we do not know what each total measures. The archers shooting 70 metres and those shooting 40 are not the same people: the questionnaire difference may come from age, category or experience, and the authors themselves write that the groups differed on those counts.

Duncan's test is reported with the significance values swapped between comparisons: 0.170 belongs to the subset that holds the 50 and 70 metre groups together, that is to their similarity, not to the difference between 40 metres and the rest. The normality tests all return p values just above threshold, from 0.055 to 0.073, with statistics that at those sample sizes would usually sit far further away. The tables are numbered 3 twice and 4 twice, and the references in the text do not line up. The authors acknowledge that the data were collected at a competition, under the pressure of the moment, and that the questionnaire is a subjective measure.

For an archer the study licenses no conclusion about the relation between mental toughness and score. What remains is a descriptive finding: among 269 Indonesian archers at competitions, the questionnaire score was slightly higher among those shooting 40 metres than among those shooting 50 and 70, by less than a point on a scale whose observed values lie between 32 and 40. The authors explain it by saying that 40 metres is the most frequently shot distance in Indonesia and therefore the most familiar, but since the three groups are made up of different people that explanation cannot be told apart from a difference in age, category or level.

In the registry the study counts for what it measured, two sets of numbers on a large sample, not as evidence that mental toughness makes anyone shoot better. Anyone looking for that answer might note how easily it could have been had: relate the questionnaire score to the competition score within each distance. With 269 archers the data were there, and nobody did it.