Perfectionism in archery coaches: Hong 2008 study

One hundred and thirteen coaches of Korean school archery teams, at middle and high school level, completed a questionnaire on perfectionism and one on job stress. Of the three kinds of perfectionism, the highest was self-oriented, the standards coaches set for themselves (mean 3.88 out of 5), followed by other-oriented, the standards demanded of others (2.87), and finally socially prescribed, the sense that others demand perfection of them (2.22). Among sources of stress, on a scale of 1 to 7, working conditions (3.87) and competition results (3.61) came first, followed by workload (3.41), the support system (3.37) and, last, relationships with people (2.24).

Self-oriented perfectionism goes with less stress over working conditions (correlation -0.24) and workload (-0.32), but with more stress over competition results (0.26). Other-oriented perfectionism goes with more stress over competitions (0.24) and workload (0.20). Socially prescribed perfectionism is linked to none of the sources of stress. In the regressions, the share of stress explained by perfectionism is small: 6.5% for working conditions, 9.8% for competitions and 11.3% for workload.

The coaches were recruited in 2007 at the Kim Soo-nyung archery field in Cheongju, during the 33rd Minister of Culture Cup national championship for middle and high schools and the 28th Hwarang-gi championship. Only coaches on regular contracts registered with the federation were included; those employed as permanent teachers were excluded. Of 145 questionnaires, 125 came back and 113 were used. The coaches were 83 men and 30 women; 57.5% were under thirty and 37.2% in their thirties; 71 coached at middle school and 42 at high school; 46.0% had 3 to 5 years of experience.

Perfectionism is measured with a Korean adaptation of Hewitt and Flett's Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale for coaches, with responses from 1 to 5: after factor analysis there are 4 items for self-oriented perfectionism, 4 for other-oriented and 3 for socially prescribed. Job stress is measured with a Korean scale for coaches with responses from 1 to 7, split into support, working conditions, workload, relationships with people and competition results (the last with 2 items). The coaches filled in the questionnaires themselves during practice the day before competition or during the sighter session on the day itself. The analyses are Pearson correlations and multiple regressions in SPSS 13.0.

Perfectionism explains at most 11.3% of any source of stress, and the authors themselves acknowledge that its explanatory power is low. The study is cross-sectional and based on questionnaires filled in at the same moment, so it cannot say whether perfectionism produces stress or whether working conditions change how people see themselves. The questionnaire was completed during a national championship, on the eve of competition or on the day itself, when stress over results is at its peak, and competition stress is measured with only two items.

Some reliability values are low (0.627 appears for three scales), and those for the five stress scales repeat exactly the values for the perfectionism scales, which suggests a transcription error. The stress scale is described as running from 1 to 7, with end points worded as "very dissatisfied" and "very satisfied", yet no value in the descriptive table exceeds 5. The sample excludes coaches employed as school teachers and consists largely of young coaches with few years of experience. The study says nothing about the athletes or their results. The text is in Korean, with an English abstract.

For archers the study says little, because it is about coaches rather than athletes. For coaches it describes a picture with two sides: coaches who demanded a lot of themselves reported less stress over working conditions and workload but more over competition results, while coaches who demanded a lot of others reported more stress over both competitions and workload. The associations are weak and say nothing about what happens to these coaches' athletes.

One piece of context remains: for these young Korean coaches, hired on contract rather than as permanent teachers, working conditions were the leading source of stress, ahead even of competitions.