Published Paper Details:

The purpose of the present study was to compare sports achievement motivation and aggression among university-level volleyball players according to their playing positions. Volleyball is a highly competitive team sport in which psychological characteristics significantly influence athletic performance and competitive behaviour. Different playing positions in volleyball involve different technical and tactical responsibilities, which may affect the psychological characteristics of players. A total of 105 male university-level volleyball players from different universities of Chhattisgarh were selected randomly as subjects. The selected players were equally divided into three groups consisting of libero, attacker, and setter players. Sports Achievement Motivation Test (SAMT) developed by M. L. Kamlesh (1990) and Sports Aggression Inventory (SAI) developed by Anand Kumar and Prem Shankar Shukla (1998) were used for the collection of data. Mean, standard deviation, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Post Hoc analysis were employed for statistical analysis. The findings of the study revealed statistically significant differences among libero, attacker, and setter volleyball players with respect to achievement motivation and aggression. Attacker players demonstrated the highest achievement motivation and aggression levels, followed by setter players, whereas libero players recorded the lowest scores among the three groups. The study concluded that psychological variables differ according to the playing positions of volleyball players and highlighted the importance of position-specific psychological preparation and mental training in volleyball coaching programmes.