Mental skills of archers: Hendrayana 2020 study

A psychological skills questionnaire was given to the 16 archers in the squad that West Java province was preparing for the Indonesian National Games (PON), postponed to 2021 in Papua because of the pandemic. The study is purely descriptive: for three areas it reports a percentage index, the sum of the responses relative to the maximum possible, and turns it into a verdict.

Anxiety control gave an index of 74.375%, mental preparation 72.3% and concentration 68.3%. On the rating scale chosen by the authors, which calls a value between 70 and 79 fairly good and one between 55 and 69 poor, the first two areas come out fairly good and concentration poor. Almost all individual items fall between 60% and 77.5%, with a single higher value, 85%, on one concentration item. There is no measure of shooting and no comparison with other groups or with another point in the season.

The questionnaire is an adaptation of the Psychological Skills Inventory for Sports (PSIS), keeping three of its six areas, chosen as the most important for archery. Responses were on a Likert scale; each item's index is the total of the responses divided by the maximum score, and an area's index is the mean of its items. Every member of the squad responded, so there was no sampling, just the whole squad. The analysis stops at frequencies, means and percentages computed in SPSS and, as the authors state, does not relate the variables to one another.

The number of items does not add up: the methods text speaks of 21 items, the table describing them lists 22 (8 for anxiety, 6 for mental preparation, 8 for concentration), and the results discuss 22 items one by one.

Many items are worded negatively (six of the eight on anxiety, five of the eight on concentration) and the paper does not say whether they were reverse-scored before summing; if they were not, a high index could mean the opposite of what it appears to say. There is also no reliability check of the Indonesian version and no item text.

The rating thresholds are a convention chosen by the authors, not drawn from reference data on archers: calling 68.3% concentration poor means only that it falls below 70. There are minor inconsistencies too, such as the first area being called self-confidence rather than anxiety control in the results, or an item at 77.5% being rated poor. Sixteen archers from a single provincial squad, measured once and with no competition data, allow nothing to be said about the link between these skills and score, even though the introduction names that link as the aim.

For anyone who shoots, the content is a snapshot: in that squad, at that moment, the archers rated themselves slightly lower on concentration than on anxiety control and mental preparation. It does not show that their concentration was poor in any absolute sense, since there is nothing to compare it with, and it does not say whether working on it would have changed their scores.

For a coach, any value lies in the approach: a short questionnaire repeated over time with the same squad can show how athletes' view of themselves changes, provided it is clear how the negatively worded items were scored. A single percentage profile read against arbitrary thresholds says little.