Abstract des Autors

Coaches in elite sports are often required to cope with judgement and decision problems in competition. In order to aid coaches in diagnosing the development of an individual athlete's psychological performance crisis in competition, a theoretical model of crisis development is suggested. Structurally, such a process in a dynamic, open system (i.e., athlete), is conceived as having three phases: stability, lability and crisis. A brief discussion of this process is followed by its probabilistic characterization. The following diagnostic factors are used: ability to cope with psychological stress, competitive motivation, time phases, game standings, task-performance, rule- und norm-related violations. A "psychological crisis questionnaire" was constructed. 28 basketball experts evaluated conditional probabilities related to these factors. Bayes' theorem is applied for probabilistic crisis development diagnosis in individual athletes during competition. It is demonstrated how results of such continuous diagnosis, namely posterior probabilities, may constitute a reference for direct choice of intervention measures. The results are discussed with regard to coaches' decision behavior in competition. Verf.-Referat