Predictive roles of perceived stressors and life skills on stress responses of collegiate athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Problem Statement: The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly altered the daily lives of humanity, including in sports. Competitions were canceled or postponed, and sports activities were restricted to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which collegiate athletes might have perceived as stressors. Previous studies have reported that athletes have experienced stress responses during the pandemic. Life skills, which can be developed through sports activities, help athletes cope with critical events. Purpose: This study aimed to examine whether COVID-19-related stressors and life skills can predict stress responses of Japanese collegiate athletes. An online survey was conducted in December 2020 to assess collegiate athletes' perceived COVID-19-related stressors, stress responses, and life skills. A sample of 123 collegiate athletes (66 females and 57 males, age: 20.35, SD: 1.17) who played various sports participated in this study. Results: The results of the f-test indicated that female athletes perceived more stressors and experienced more stress responses than male athletes. The results of the multiple regression analysis showed that COVID-19-related stressors positively predicted stress responses, whereas life skills negatively predicted stress responses. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analyses using subscales of stressors, stress responses, and life skills showed that restrictions on sports activities positively predicted physical fatigue and apathy, self-restraint requests positively predicted depression, and pressure from the surrounding environment positively predicted physical fatigue, anger, and depression. Among the subscales of life skills, positive thinking negatively predicted all five subscales of stress responses, intimacy negatively predicted anger and interpersonal distrust, planning negatively predicted physical fatigue, empathy negatively predicted interpersonal distrust, and knowledge summarization negatively predicted anger. Conclusions: These findings indicate that life skills, especially positive thinking, intimacy, planning, empathy, and knowledge summarization, could be utilized by collegiate athletes as a buffer for stress responses in challenging situations and provide helpful information for designing effective life skill programs.