Competitive anxiety and archery scores: Shaari 2023

Forty-four recurve archers from six Malaysian states, aged 18 to 24, completed a sport anxiety questionnaire (SAS-2) 30 minutes before a scoring round at 70 metres, then shot 36 arrows. The mean score was 286.91 out of 360 (standard deviation 25.24, range 204 to 335). Total anxiety, averaging 33.32 out of a possible 60, correlated with score at -0.45 (p = 0.002): archers who reported more anxiety tended to score fewer points.

Of the questionnaire's three components, worry was highest (12.62 out of 20), followed by concentration disruption (10.47) and somatic anxiety (10.33). The paper does not, however, report how each component correlated with score: the link with performance is calculated on the total only.

The archers represented their states in national competition (the SUKMA games and the national circuit) and had at least three years of activity: 24 men and 20 women, mean age 20.66, with 7.82 years of shooting. The figure of 44 was taken from a statistical table based on the 48 registered archers. The questionnaire, sent out by the coaches as an online form, has 15 items on a 1 to 4 scale, five for each component. The test was a team scoring event: 6 ends of 6 arrows at 70 metres, four minutes per end. The authors point out that the result counted towards team ranking, selection for tournaments and in some cases the athlete's allowance. The analysis is a Pearson correlation between the questionnaire total and the round score.

There is one round and one correlation: it cannot tell whether anxiety lowered scores or whether weaker archers, aware of being weaker, arrived more anxious. Men and women are analysed together without accounting for sex, which can affect both score and reported anxiety, and the same goes for experience. The title refers to a national competition, but the test was an internal team scoring event, with real stakes but not the same as a tournament.

Without the correlations for the individual components, the idea in the discussion that worry matters most does not come from the data. The total mean given in the discussion (33.32) does not match the sum of the three components (33.42). The mention of target panic as a possible consequence of anxiety is the authors' speculation, not something they measured. The paper appeared in conference proceedings.

The study is one of the few to relate anxiety reported before a round to the score in that same round among archers of a good standard, and it finds a moderate link: higher anxiety tended to go with fewer points. That fits what many archers know from experience, but with 44 people, a single round and no adjustment for sex or experience it should be read as an indication, not as a measure of an effect. It does not say which aspect of anxiety matters, or whether working on it improves scores. For coaches there is one practical point: the SAS-2 takes about ten minutes to complete before a round and, in this group, its total tracked the result.