Investigation of Elite Taekwondo Athletes’ Coping Styles with Stress

The purpose of this research is to examine elite-level male and female taekwondo athletes’ coping styles with stress. A total of 111 taekwondo athletes in a Taekwondo Championships in Turkey (55 female and 56 male; Mean age = 21. 09 ± SD = 2.709) participated voluntarily in the study. As a data collection tool, "Ways of Coping Inventory (SCI)" which was developed by Folkman and Lazarus and adapted to Turkish by Sahin and Durak (1995) was used. This is a 30-item scale. There are five sub-dimensions of the scale. While the sub-dimensions of the "self-confident", "optimistic" and "social support" is regarded as the most efficient ways of coping with stress, "helpless" and "submissive" is considered to be ineffective ways. For data analysis, the Mann-Whitney test analysis was used. Result of the study shows that there are statistically significant differences between men and women elite taekwondo athletes' "self-confident" (z = -3,355, p = .001) "optimistic approach" (z = -4,077, p = .000). On the other hand, no statistically significant differences were found in the sub-dimension "social support" (z = -1.887, p = .059), "helpless" (z = -.920, p=.358) and "submissive" (z = -.006, p = .995).