Iranian Journal of War and Public Health

Aims: Emotional and mental preparedness can play an important role in making correct and timely decisions, proper performance implementation, increase morale and motivation of the athletes through effect on the quality of the relationship between the teammates and understanding the mutual emotions during competition. This study aimed to investigate and compare the level of emotional intelligence of the veteran and disabled volleyball players with non-disabled volleyball players and its correlation with national games.

Materials & Methods: The present field study was done on 46 veteran and disabled volleyball players and 58 non-disabled volleyball players participated in the Iran Volleyball Super League Competition in 2011-12 who were selected by simple random sampling. In order to evaluate the athletes' emotional intelligence, Cibria Shearing emotional intelligence questionnaire was used. The questionnaire evaluated five subscales including self-awareness, self-control, self-motivation, empathy and social skills. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and independent T-test were used to compare the subscales of emotional intelligence of the two groups. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to assess the correlation between emotional intelligence and the national game experience.

Findings: There was a significant difference between self-control (p=0.003 t=3.54), empathy (p=0.016 t=2.76) and social skills (p=0.024 t=3.41) subscales between two groups. The national games number had a significant correlation with social skills (p=0.016), and self-control (p=0.004).

Conclusion: High emotional intelligence has effect on optimal performance of sports skills.