Determination of self-handicapping and self-esteem levels of rugby national team athletes

The aim of this study was to determine the self-handicapping and self-esteem levels of Turkish Rugby National Team athletes. The subjects participated in the study were the athletes who were invited to and took part in the rugby national team training camps in 2021. 98 national rugby team athletes (63 men and 35 women)took part in the study. Ethics committee approval was obtained from Hitit University Non-Interventional Researches Ethics Committee and institutional permission was obtained from the Turkish Rugby Federation prior to the research. The subjects' written consent were also obtained prior to their participation in the study. In order to determine the participants' levels of self-esteem, the Self-Esteem Scale developed by Rosenberg (1965), adapted into Turkish by Tukuş (2010), was used. The Self-Handdicapping Scale developed by Jones and Rhodewalt (1982) which was adapted into Turkish by Akın (2012) was used to determine the levels of self-handicapping. SPSS 25.0 (IBM Corp., USA) was used for statistical analysis. The normal distribution of the data was tested by using Shapiro-Wilk, Q-Q Plot and histogram analysis. Since it was seen that the data were not normally distributed, non-parametric tests were used. As a result of the study, it was found that the self-handicapping scores of rugby athletes were below the average level referred in the literature, there was no difference in self-esteem scores according to the variables examined, and there was a significant difference in the self-handicapping scores between the groups according to the education level, sports age and vehicle ownership variables. It was determined that there was a negative correlation between rugby players' self-esteem and self-handicapping scores, at the level of r=-0.40. In future studies, it is recommended to investigate the effects of self-handicapping and self-esteem on the performance of rugby athletes, to increase the number of subjects by including non-national athletes, and to conduct a similar study by including elite athletes from different sports branches.