Matteo Campagna
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Among an archer's mental skills, performing at your best under pressure stands on its own

1 study · 32 archers measured

Only one study says so, in thirty-two young Malaysian archers from a state development programme who completed the coping skills questionnaire, the ACSI-28. Principal component analysis splits the seven scales into three blocks: coping with adversity, concentration, and confidence and motivation sit together and on their own account for 42% of the variance; coachability and freedom from worry form a second block, which the goal setting and mental preparation scale partly leans on as well; peaking under pressure stands alone, loading 0.98 on its own component and almost nothing on the other two (0.04 and -0.01), while no other scale loads on that component by more than 0.27 either way. Put like that it sounds clear-cut, but it does not hold up well. Thirty-two people are few for seven variables, and the measure of sampling adequacy is very low precisely on the two scales that break away, 0.21 for peaking under pressure and 0.34 for freedom from worry: a scale that does not tie in with the others may be a separate ability, but it may also be a scale that measures poorly in that sample. The journal, moreover, has questionable editorial standards: the registry reports the study but does not use it to decide the status, which remains not studied.

Also phrased as: "peaking under pressure"; "a training archer but not a competition archer"; "mental toughness in competition"; "archers' mental skills"

In practice

People say there are archers who are superb in training and vanish in competition, and that holding up under pressure is a different gift from concentration or confidence, one that has to be trained on its own.

Evidence

  • 2018
    Context Archers Published later

    Venue with questionable editorial standards: this result does not count towards the status. 32 young Malaysian archers from a state development programme, ACSI-28 and principal component analysis with varimax rotation: the third component is made of peaking under pressure alone (loading 0.98), with every other scale between -0.27 and 0.17; eigenvalue 1.11, 15.89% of the variance. This scale's sampling adequacy is the lowest in the set (KMO 0.21, against 0.60 overall).

    Supervised pattern recognition of archers’ relative psychological coping skills as a component for a better archery performance Questionable venue · Z. Taha, R. M. Musa, M. R. Abdullah, A. B. H. M. Maliki, N. A. Kosni, S. M. Mat-Rasid, A. Adnan, H. Juahir

  • 2018
    Context Archers Published later

    In the same study, the other two blocks: coping with adversity (0.88), concentration (0.83) and confidence and motivation (0.82) make up the first component, 42.18% of the variance; coachability (0.72) and freedom from worry (0.81) the second, 20.77%, with goal setting and mental preparation split between the two (0.57 and 0.65). Together the three components explain 78.84%; the sampling adequacy of freedom from worry is low as well (KMO 0.34).

    Supervised pattern recognition of archers’ relative psychological coping skills as a component for a better archery performance Questionable venue · Z. Taha, R. M. Musa, M. R. Abdullah, A. B. H. M. Maliki, N. A. Kosni, S. M. Mat-Rasid, A. Adnan, H. Juahir

  • 2018
    Context Archers Published later

    The sample's scores on the seven scales: almost all around the middle, with the highest values on confidence and motivation (7.41 ± 1.68) and coping with adversity (7.00 ± 1.83) and among the lowest peaking under pressure (5.44 ± 1.22) and coachability (5.16 ± 1.30); internal consistency of the items between 0.67 and 0.82.

    Supervised pattern recognition of archers’ relative psychological coping skills as a component for a better archery performance Questionable venue · Z. Taha, R. M. Musa, M. R. Abdullah, A. B. H. M. Maliki, N. A. Kosni, S. M. Mat-Rasid, A. Adnan, H. Juahir

Status history

  1. 2018 Not studied Thirty-two young Malaysian archers complete the coping skills questionnaire, and the component analysis separates three blocks. Confidence and motivation, coping with adversity and concentration sit together and on their own explain 42% of the variance; coachability and freedom from worry form a second group; peaking under pressure stands alone, loading 0.98 on its own component and almost nothing on the other two, with the other scales loading between -0.27 and 0.17 on that component. A single study, thirty-two people for seven variables, low sampling adequacy precisely on the two scales that break away and a journal with questionable editorial standards: the registry reports the study but does not use it to decide the status, which remains not studied.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). Among an archer's mental skills, performing at your best under pressure stands on its own (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/peaking-under-pressure-separate-skill

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_strutturaabilitamentaliarcieri,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Among an archer's mental skills, performing at your best under pressure stands on its own},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/peaking-under-pressure-separate-skill},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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