Psychological capital and grit in football and handball referees

• Autor(a) principal: Lourenço, Filipe do Val
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/24212
• topic: Psychological capital; Proactive personality; Grit; Perceived support; Football refereeing; Handball refereeing; Capital psicológico; Suporte percebido; Personalidade proativa; Garra; Arbitragem do futebol; Arbitragem do andebol

Objective: While there is an increasing interest in the vital role that referees play within sports, their psychological facet has been considerably underresearched. Thus, this study bids to address this gap in the literature by investigating the mediation effect of Grit on the relationship between proactive personality and perceived social support to Psychological Capital (PsyCap) withing the context of football and handball referees. Design: Cross-sectional study with a non-probabilistic convenience sample of 663 active football and handball referees within the regional, national, and professional categories in June of 2020. Results: PsyCap was positively associated with grit as was perceived social support to PsyCap. The relationship of perceived social support to PsyCap and the grit mediation of this relationship revealed statistical significance. Proactive personality was positively associated with PsyCap as was with grit. Grit mediation of this relationship did also show statistical significance. Sports refereed moderation show no statistical significance in the analyzed paths. Conclusion: This study emphasizes the psychological side of refereeing by incorporating PsyCap in the refereeing context of two distinctive sports of football and handball. It incorporates into its research model proactive personality, perceived social support and grit investigating their multiple relationships. It is argued that PsyCap may represent an adequate tool in the sports’ refereeing context and may be of use for recruiting and development purposes.