Perceived personal competence of tennis players

Abstract

The present study aimed to determine the degree of association between the Perceived Personal Competence (PCP) with sporting use of tennis players. The sample, selected on a voluntary basis, non-probabilistic, consisted of 29 tennis players Category Under 12 Years Male (mean age 11.99 ± 0.54 years), participants of the Brazilian rank. The instruments used for the data collection were an anamnesis questionnaire, the player’s technical sheet of Brazilian Tennis Confederation (CBT) and the Perceived Competence Scale - PCS (Harter, 1985, adapted to Portuguese by Valentini, 2010). It was used the simple linear regression model, adopting as confidence interval p<0.05 to data analysis. The results indicated that the tennis players Category Up to 12M feature high PCP (3.07 ± 0.32), which showed a positive association with success sport rate, in categories PC Athletic (p<0.03 and r=0.40) and PC Affective (p<0.05 and r=0.37). The remaining areas of the PCP showed no significant association with the success sport rate. The results suggest the importance of encouraging children to participate in achieving the targeted yield goals competitions and provide athletes situations that promote the success and enhance the positive experiences.