Abstract:
This research study has taken a step further to study and combine both factors
‘psychosocial’ and its impacts on sport performance. The psychosocial factor is
relating to the interrelation of social factors and individual thought and behavior.
There has been a majority of explorations of the social dimension and psychology
aspect in Sri Lanka. But limited investigation was carried on the relationship with
psychosocial factors and sport performance. In the recent past, psychosocial factors
were mostly used in studies in medical and health sciences. This investigation which
was carried out with the Olympians is unique since they were not interacted on a
similar study before. The objective of this study was to investigate psychosocial
factors and their influence in successful and poor sport performance across career
stages of Olympic level athletes. The theoretical framework for the research was
based on the ‘developmental model on transitions faced by athletes’. The study
population was selected from athletes who represented Sri Lanka during 2000
Sydney to 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Ten Summer Olympic athletes (N=10) have
taken part in the study sample representing five individuals and one team sport.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. Thematic analysis was
used to analyze data and focus on examining themes within data. The collected
information was preferred into three parts and eight categories. The research has
revealed that the psychosocial factors contributed to the successful sport
performance and poor sport performance evenly during initiation, development,
mastery phases and maintenance stages. The impact of parents, family, coach, peers,
siblings and other factors were studied among career stages. The results presented
that the psychosocial factors play a different role in the different career stages. For
instance, supportive family and parents were the most important factors to Olympic
athletes’ successful sport performance on the initiation stage and the lack of family
and coach support was a more important factor to poor sport performance during
the maintenance stage. The research was recommended for future research and
implication.
