There has been tremendous dispute between sports psychologist regarding the research findings about athlete’s individual personality characteristics and its relationship to sports performance behavior. Despite the controversy  many sport psychologists believe that personality is highly correlated to sports performance and individual personality characteristics have great reflection on athlete’s behavior during sports events. (Gill, D., L., 1986).  For establishing a relationship between individual’s personality characteristic and sports performance, sports psychologist urbanized several tools that had the ability to distinguish individual personality traits. These tools were used for program design and were seeking the greatest effect for optimum performance achievement (Gill, D., L., 1986).

Main tools used for behavioral analysis assessment by sports psychologists

•            Observation

•            Questionnaires

•            Interviews

•            Performance profile

  The performance profile development

   The importance of discovering individual personality traits lead the sport psychologists to develop a method that will utilize athlete’s personality characteristics and will underline objective and subjective personality distinctiveness that will be valuable for performance success. The method was based on the Personal Construct Theory urbanized by (Bannister,D.,& Fransella,F., 1986; Kelly,G.,A.,1955) and targeted athletes personal performance improvement, and was displayed in a form of performance profile.

 The development of the performance profile was created by combination of frequencies that were key indicators of successful performance. By analyzing these indicators sports psychologist had the ability to utilize a tool that will have future performance prediction properties (Hughes, M., et.al, 2001).

The goal of any sports performer is ultimately to achieve optimal performance. This is often facilitated by cooperation between the performer and a supporting sport scientist.                    

Traditionally, sport scientists have taken the lead in planning and organizing programs to correct weaknesses that they have identified by observing athletes’ performances.   However, performers may interpret their needs in a quite different way which is not correlated with the planning of the sports scientist. This difference in opinions can lead to frustration from both sides as a result of diminished athletic performance (Butler, R., J., 1996).  Furthermore a potential disparity of perceived needs between the sport scientist and performer about which elements to focus on for optimal performance achievement, and the performer’ s relatively passive role in this decision-making process, may lead to adherence problems during the proposed training program (Butler,R.,J.,& Hardy,L., 1992) .

 The performance profile technique has been proposed to overcome such problems. The profile is based on selected principles of the Personal Construct Theory model and takes into account selected individual needs that will be beneficial in maximizing athletic performance results (Butler,R.,J.,& Hardy,L., 1992).

   These principles emphasize the individual’s difference of perceptual interpretation of important surrounding conditions that are related to different sports. Personal construct theory indicates that program design needs to be individually characterized according to athletes, technical, physiological, tactical and psychological condition and supports these principles (Butler,R.,J.,& Hardy,L., 1992) .The performance profile allows performers to construct visual displays of the elements that perceive to be crucial to optimal performance (Butler, R., J., 1989).Allows individual exploration and constructs a system of communication between athletes coach and sports psychologists (Butler, R., J., 1989).

To sum up the strength of using performance profile is the athlete’s self-evaluation of elemental perceptual behaviors that will lead to performance improvement. Subsequently provides athlete’s participation in program design that probably will increase intrinsic motivation and better adherence to performance intervention may occur (Butler, R., J., 1989).    

References:

1. Bannister, D., & Fransella, F., 1986,Inquiring man-The theory of personal constructs, London: Groom Helm

2. Bull, S.J. (1991), ‘Personal and situational influences on adherence to mental skills training ’, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 13, no.2, 121-132

3. Butler, R.J. (1989), Psychological preparation of Olympic boxers, ‘The Psychology of Sport: Theory and Practice ’, Leicester: British Psychological Society

4. Butler, R.J., & Hardy, L., (1992), ‘The Performance Profile: Theory and Application’, The Sport Psychologist, 6, no.3, 253-264.

5. Butler, R.J. (1996). Sports Psychology in Action, Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.

6. Deci, E.L. & Ryan, R.M. (1985), Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in human behavior, New York: Plenum

7. Doyle, J., & Parfitt, G. (1996), ‘Performance profiling and predictive validity , Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 8, no.2, 160- 170.

8. Gill,D. L.,(1986), Psychological Dynamics in Sports, Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics

10. Kelly, G.A. (1955), The Psychology of Personal Constructs, New York: Norton

9. Hughes, M., Evans, S.,Wells, J. (2001),‘ Establishing normative profiles in performance analysis , International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 1, no.1,1–26