Supervised pattern recognition of archers’ relative psychological coping skills as a component for a better archery performance

Abstract

The  current  study  explores  the  most  significant  psychological  skills  needed  for the accomplishment  of  high  archery scores  and  determines  the  discriminating psychological coping skills needed for archery performance. 32 archers completed psychological coping skills inventory before their shooting tests. Multivariate techniques of principal component analysis, hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis and discriminant analysis were applied. The rotated PCA indicates 3 parameters containing 6 and 3 principal components (Pcs). The first Pcs reveal high loadings from three psychological skills. The second Pcs disclose high loadings from two skills, while the third Pcs demonstrate a high loading from only one skill. HACA  classified the archers  into two classes  viz. High-performance group and low performance group. DA discriminates the classes with an excellent accuracy of 93.55%.

Keywords: archery; pattern recognition; psychological coping skills; multivariate analysis