XXI Congresso Nazionale AIPS, Bologna

Profesor Marijana Mladenovic held the presentation at the 21st National Congress of Sports psychology in Bologna with the topic: “The role of Color association method in psychological assessment of Serbian handball team for Euro 2014″

Targets:
Color Association Method (CA method), is a projective technique based on Lüscher’s color test. CAM claims Marijana Mladenovicto
explore mental resilience during the competition by measuring athlete’s self-perception of pain, effort,
fear, tiredness, injury, readiness for competition and training, ability to take a risk during the match, and
relying on habits in sports context. Result on CA method can vary from zero to 100. The aim of this research was
to explore application of CA method in pre-competition personality assessment of national Serbian handball
female team for European championship 2014.

Method:
Seventeen members of Serbian senior handball women’s team for European championship 2014, were
tested by CA method, SCAT and CSAI-2. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA were applied.
Risultati: Results of ANOVA suggested there is significant relation between SCAT score and CAM measure of
tiredness (F=6,459; p<0,006), training (F=7,639; p<0,003) and competition (F=4,417; p<0,021), and result on
Cognitive anxiety subscale of CSAI-2 and CAM injury (F=4,155; p<0,026).

Discussion/Conclusion:
This reasearch indicate possible application of CA method in sport psychology assessment. Applied on SerbianWP_20160529_12_50_07_Pro
handball national team during pre-competition period for European championship 2014, it has been shown
that subjective sense of tiredness might be connected with the highest SCAT scores, while optimal mental
state for training and competition is related to average results on SCAT. Furthermore, the lowest levels of
cognitive anxiety measured by CSAI-2, best corresponds with theoretical average value on CA method injury
measure. It might be concluded that high level of sport competition anxiety (SCAT) corresponds with
subjective feeling of tiredness, while optimal mental state for competition and training is around average
arousal level. Low cognitive anxiety goes hand in hand with realistic perception of injury during competition
(average CA method injury scores).