PERFECTIONISM, MOOD STATES, AND COPING STRATEGIES OF SPORTS STUDENTS FROM BULGARIA AND RUSSIA DURING THE PANDEMIC COVID-19

Abstract

The pandemic COVID-19 constituted one of the greatest ordeals the world has seen in the last decades. Social isolation has changed athletes’ lives completely and brought a number of consequences – both technical and psychological. The aim of this study was to investigate the dominant psychic conditions and perfectionism and their relation to the preferred coping strategies during the pandemic COVID-19 among sports students from Bulgaria and Russia and to outline their specificity depending on their gender, kind of sport, qualification, and nationality. The research was done among 199 sports students from Bulgaria and Russia who practice 18 kinds of sport, aged between 16 and 32 years, divided into groups according to their gender, kind of sport, level of qualification, nationality. The research methods included: 1) Sociodemographic, personal and sports evaluation; 2) Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS, Frost, Marten, Lahart & Rosenblate, 1990), adapted for Bulgarian conditions by T. Iancheva, 2009; 3) Profile of Mood States (McNair, Lorr, & Droppleman, 1971); 4) Approach to Coping in Sport Questionnaire (ACSQ-1; Kim 1999; Kim & Duda, 1997). There are significant differences depending on gender, kind of sport, qualification, and nationality. The specific role of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism was viewed in relation to the dominant psychic conditions during social isolation and the preferred coping strategies.